Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Call your state reps: http://tryvoices.com/
ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/end-prisons-profit
I mean, look I agree with you that they need to be closed, but there are likely better examples of them just being worse on merit, without having to dive into bribery and whatnot.
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/court-denies-civarella-appe...
EDIT - You can verify this online at https://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/ and search for 15008-067
They never should have allowed the number of jointly tried cases that they did. They used joint prosecution as a tactic, combining lesser hard-to-prove charges against one defendant with severe charges against another in the same trial, relying upon the strength of the evidence against one defendant to damn them both.
Regardless, their investigation was very beneficial in the long run. Low-level corruption used to be endemic in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, until the Federal government came to town. Following the "Kids for Cash" case, the area became the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry into official abuse of office.
By the time the dust settled, close to two dozen officials were criminally charged, including a state senator, a very wealthy commercial real estate developer, and two county commissioners.
I too am pleased with the outcome. However, the law is about fairness in process, not fairness in outcome. In a case like this, the judge is often so disgusted by the defendant that they make up their mind and find a legal justification afterwards.
The precedent judges set in order to convict "bad" defendants can then be used in other less serious cases. From this comes the common saying amongst lawyers, "Bad cases make bad law."
For example, raiding a paedophile's home without a warrant or probable cause is satisfying, and often just in outcome. However, it is not just in process if the judge allows the evidence to be admitted. If a precedent is set in that case, prosecutors will take it as judicial license to raid more homes without warrants. The evidence from those raids can then be admitted under whatever tortured theory the appellate judge used to ensure the paedophile was convicted.
Remember, once the government sets a precedent, there is nothing to keep them from applying it to you.
The article above is from 2/29/09. A 2014 article[0] shows their guilty pleas were later rejected due to their behavior, and both given larger sentences.
> Both originally agreed to spend seven years in prison, but then Ciavarella talked exclusively with Newswatch 16.
> "I loved the juvenile court, I loved helping those kids. I would never do anything to hurt a child, that's just not what I do. That's not me. I was always there for those kids. I resent the fact that people think I did something improper. I didn't do anything improper when it came to the care of those kids," said Ciavarella in July of 2009.
> Days after that interview, a federal judge rejected the guilty pleas of Ciavarella and Conahan, saying their behavior didn't really accept guilt.
[0] http://wnep.com/2014/01/26/five-years-since-ciavarella-and-c...
Mark Ciavarella (#15008-067): Ashland FCI until 30 December 2035
Michael Conahan (#15009-067): Coleman Low FCI until 18 December 2026
It's still unbelievable to me. These judges and contractors were well-respected members of the community. Yet they committed perhaps one of the most heinous breaches of trust possible in a justice system: selling children into prison for personal profit.
I met these men. They did not start out "evil." However, in a relatively isolated Rust Belt region, the judges are some of the most powerful political figures in the county. The conspirators messages show the slow progression from neutrality into almost gleeful corruption, as they became intoxicated with the power of the bench.
What matters is repaying the "debt" to society. Hard to do when a year in prison can cost more to the taxpayer than a year at Harvard.
Probably most out-of-touch statement of the year.
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/98...
Harsh punishments do work, when you apply them consistently and early on. While you may think that being caned is harsh, most people I've talked to would prefer to be caned over a month in prison.
Singapore's use of the death penalty is a fairly good example. Kidnapping is a capitol offense -- consequently you see young kids walking around the Singapore alone and taking buses on their own.
The consensus among criminologists is that capital punishment isn't a deterrent.[0] That's why capital punishment advocates rely on emotional arguments around punitive and revenge. And a counter anecdote, you can see children playing and navigating cities alone in The Netherlands and across Europe, and none of those countries have capital punishment.
Furthermore, crime is actually at historic lows.[1] In fact, it's categorically safer now, than it was when you were a kid, or when your parents were kids. Thirdly, kidnappings occur primarily by estranged parents, and is also lower now than ever.[2] Pedobear in the van with "FREE KANDEE!" scrawled on the side in crayon is exceptionally rare. If your kid wants to ride the bus alone, you totally should let them. It's a fun, safe, adventure. In fact, kids do it the United States every day.[3]
[-2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore#Medical_tr...
[-1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3c9_1304013159
[0] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-n...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-mis...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/05/26/...
Masochists all over the world support your cause.
Trump?
Oh, you meant criminal sentencing, not grammar. Got it.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/criminal-justice-refor...
Though I should say that I'm not sure shorter sentences across the board are what's needed. We definitely need shorter sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and shorter sentences for inmates who seem like they can be rehabilitated is a good idea.
On the other hand, I infrequently read about cases in the news where some deeply disturbed individual commits a truly heinous crime, and then is back out in the general population after only 2 or 3 years. There are some people who really should be in for a longer time.
I often look at sentencing through the lens of "how would I feel if this person lived in my neighborhood." Someone like Mumia Abu-Jamal is in for life, but I wouldn't be particularly bothered if he lived next door to me (or Bernie Madoff, sentenced to 150 years). Then there are people who only get a few years, but I wouldn't want them living anywhere near me.
If you hold everyone to that standard you'll never be able to trust anything anyone says.
Can you link to the Bernie Sanders super predator video? Do you know why you can't find it? Integrity. Is that really an unreasonable requirement in this day and age?
Perhaps a farm surrounded by a giant concrete/steel wall would be better for everyone than prison is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/california-prop-36_...
http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-ff-pol-propositi...
The whole "private prisons cause incarceration" shtick is the same as "umbrella sales cause rain." No, rain came first, umbrella companies came after as a way to profit from rain.
Care to back that statement up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Crime and punishment is a for profit business. If you don't believe that... well then I don't know what to tell you. The War on Drugs, DRAMATICALLY increased the prison populations in the United States. States that saw an explosion in their prison populations and that we strapped for cash / didn't care to deal with the incarcerated (particularly southern states) turned to private industry to house their incarcerated populations.
> Money from where?
What money? Taxpayer money. And once private business get's a taste of blood, and politicians in the US get that first taste of kickback money, we all know where it goes from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline
If WE as a society decide that WE want to sent people to prison, WE should have to deal with the consequences of it. WE should be responsible for the incarcerated. WE should be who those prisoners are reporting to. After all, WE should have reform as the end goal. We should't have some black box prison company as the intermediary who's best interest it is to hush, abuse and prevent reform of prisoners in order to keep them coming and their pockets fat.
Your theory of causation (kickbacks from private prison companies cause harsher laws and more incarceration), though popular, doesn't explain the data. If you look at the ordering of events, what makes more sense is actually the opposite causation. Crime started going up in the 1960s due to depopulation of the cities and exporting jobs. Drugs got blamed as the bogeyman, which got the drug war started in the 1970s and 1980s. Fed up with skyrocketing crime, people voted for tough on crime laws (by huge margins and often in public referendums rather than legislation) in the 1970 through 1990s. And the last step in the chain, in the 1990s and 2000s, was private companies springing up to take advantage of the massive growth in need for prisons.
CCA isn't the problem. They're just opportunists. Part of the real problem is all the parents and teachers shrieking "just say no!" all through the 1980s and 1990s who voted dutifully for three strikes laws, "probation reform," etc. The other part of the problem is Americans: we're the most violent people in the developed world, with crime rates that are, even after decades of decline, several times higher than in Europe.
I agree totally.
In fact, one could take all of rayiner's assertions at face value and still share GP's concerns.
There are many many examples where private, for profit industry may not have nefariously instigated some governmental program, but surely fights to expand and continue it.
For example, we need not think that WWII was entered at the behest of a nascent aero-defense industry in order to boost revenue, but look what happened. (and ask that lefty Dwight Eisenhower, who coined the very term "military-industrial complex" in a warning speech to the republic as he left office)
Similarly, the utter buffoonery of our health care "insurance" industry is directly a consequence of some mid-century tax code finagling which made health "insurance" a deductible pretax employee benefit. Did those who would someday run the "blues" collude to create that system in some plot? No, but once it was well entrenched, the lock-in started with big money and big influence.
Did a bunch of far sighted conspirators get together to create the mortgage GSEs so that decades hence they could dole out lucrative sinecures? No, but once in place... etc.
The debunking of loosely reasoned talking points is, of course, the brand promise of a rayiner comment, but in this case he goes too far. There most certainly are self-perpetuating loops in government-business symbiote combinations and to deny them is willful blindness.
The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act was passed in 1970. Nixon pushed drugs as "Public Enemy #1" in 1971. The DEA was founded in 1973. All of these things were done/created to chase drugs. To imprison people who were associated/profited from drugs. All of these things coincide with the prison population inflection point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#/media/File:US_in...
The recent revelation that the Nixon administration focused on associating subversives (black people and young educated white kids) with negative "illegal" actions (black people with drugs and young white kids with communist/socialist) only underscored my argument. Especially if you take into account things like the CIA association with the Contras. The government had/has a hand in making certain segments of society illegal and imprisoning them.
I agree, the public supported a tough on crime approach. They supported it with Nixon, Bush Sr. and even with Clinton. But the government told/tells people what crime is. And it is fact that a lot more "crime" came to our attention at the start of the drug war. A drug war that happened to take place in "problem"/"subversive" communities. A drug war that happened to take place when an agency in our own government, which was tasked with stoping subversion, had it's hand in moving drugs into those same communities.
Move the drugs, lets the drugs proliferate, let the increased police presence from the drug war quell subversion.
The fallout was the prison industrial complex and the private prison industry.
I'm not saying that the private prison problem came first, but at this point they damn sure have enough power and money to make sure that they're not going away any time soon.
I'm sure the $45+ million spent lobbying congress had nothing to do with increasing private prisons 'clients' and keeping prohibition of cannabis. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
/sarcasm
Their side of the story was that Pennsylvanian's children correction facilities were crap and he did not feel comfortable sending kids there. He organized a group of investors to pay for a new facility. The real estate developer who got the contract to build it paid the judge a "finders fee" for the referral. The Judges didn't report the money. As far as the harsh sentences the judge was doing that for years as an over reaction to the Columbine thing. It's an interesting doc suggest checking it out.
You're right and wrong at the same time :)
The first time someone goes to prison is certainly not the private prison's fault (at least not directly; if they have family constantly in prison that can certainly harm and even guide someone to crime). The problem comes with repeat incarcerations. The private prison is incentivized to have people released with little to no help / guidance and the path of least resistance is returning to crime.
Yes private prisons are not 100% to blame for someone returning to crime. But we have shown through many rehabilitation problems that a large majority of prisoners can return and become productive. But when you're optimizing for the most amount of money you can get (which is currently head count for private prisons) you have zero incentive to pay for programs to help rehabilitate prisoners.
I could have sworn there was but I'm having a hard time finding a reliable source (just plenty of blogs and anecdotes) so I could be wrong. At least it makes sense to me, logically, but I have no idea if that's the real case.
Umbrellas's can't lobby or pay politicians for more rain.
I have personally found American people to be very cheerful and forgiving too. Land of second opportunities! But people are super insecure. They are not willing to stand up for the rights of criminals no matter what the crime is. It makes politician's life far more easier.
And I'm not saying religion should influence our laws, but I find the hypocrisy astounding when the far right in this country is hell-bent on pushing their religious beliefs into our laws and government policies (abortion, birth control, marriage, etc).
While I have met many Christians in America that do live by their beliefs, I have found the majority of these self-professed "Christians" I have met are simply using the term as a tribal banner in which to wage a cultural war that enriches them and continues their evolutionary propagation at the expense of those that are not of the typical WASP voting bloc. The Christian doctrine of acceptance and tolerance appears long lost, and this same bigoted crowd often seems to be those that wonder why it is many people have turned to secularism.
Those wishing extreme "punishment" on those we incarcerate -- and are supposed to rehabilitate -- are wishing to play the role of the God of the Old Testament, not follow the teachings of their messiah.
I am not super informed about Christianity in America, but it strikes me as a topic more complex and nuanced then your words might suggest you believe, and as a group more varied then you seem to have experienced.
We only forgive when it's convenient or necessary - thus Apple's hypocrisy in hiring an abusive misogynist like Dr. Dre, with Tim Cook issuing a statement that more honestly should have read "This is a multi billion dollar deal, damnit! It needs to happen so you WILL forgive him!"
To be fair I know many conservatives who are atheists who still have issues with abortion and one of them even with birth control. True it's typically a religious set of ideas that guide those groups but I would hesitate to say it's all of them.
In civilization, individual members give up the right for revenge to the state, who punishes perpetrators. Individuals may forgive a perpetrator, but that doesn't mean he/she should not be punished by the state.
Compare this with societies with practices such as qisas or blood money: if an individual (or family) forgives a perpetrator, they are not punished.
Having the government punishing people and the main religion stopping revenge cycles is a really good system!
Furthermore, the USA is lenient in sentencing and family are forging towards convicts. Compare this to Asian countries (such as Japan). In Japan, parents will break off all ties to their children if they are sentenced for a crime -- even a fairly minor one.
Try to do some petty vandalism or other anti-social behaviour in Japan, Korea or Singapore and compare the result with the result in the US.
So yes, it would make sense for a truly Christian nation to show far greater compassion than do Christian conservatives, who would have us believe that the United States was founded on Christian principles.
In the United States, compared to all countries I know of, there is huge aggregate care for the poor on the private individual, NFP organization, state and federal level.
The baseline quality of life, again relatively speaking, is enormous even if your income is below the federal poverty line. The environment is great, services “just work", and people are generally pretty friendly.
I think its ok to focus on the shortcomings because you can then improve them. But relatively speaking, I couldnt think of a better place to be poor.
I have seen first-hand that America and Americans can believe in 2nd chances, particularly if the perpetrator is white and comes from a middle/upper-middle class background. Police and the DA are willing to soft-pedal the charges. The prosecutor is willing to plea-bargain away and otherwise chip away at the penalty. (Even giving away 1/2 year of probation, beyond the wishes of the victim.) I've seen first-hand that 2 counts of felony assault can be whittled down to 1 year of probation -- provided the assailant is white and can afford good lawyers. White lives and white dignity matter the most in the US -- even in California and the Bay Area. Perhaps especially so.
Would a well known/well off black person who can hire good lawyers be able to whittle down 2 counts of felony assault to a year of probation?
Here in New Zealand, the son of the Maori King (a purely ceremonial and symbolic role for our native people), who was something like 3rd in line for the throne, got off a theft and drink driving conviction because he would be ineligible to hold the throne if convicted. He was eventually convicted after public outcry.
One is the disproportionate attention minority races get from the police. It's not hard evidence but here's a CNN report discussing the profiling that wealthy blacks receive in the United States.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-...
The second is the disproportionate sentencing for similar or identical crimes. Again without any hard data this seems to be mostly a class based issue. One commonly cited example of this is the differences in mandatory minimum sentences between crack cocaine and regular cocaine. Crack cocaine is often associated with lower classes due to being cheaper to acquire than powdered cocaine. Additionally there are significant differences between the legal representation that can be afforded at different levels of income.
Coupled with issue 1 this creates a disparity in how the US justice system treats minorities.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...
Just because things are chemically similar doesn't mean they are the same, nor should they bet treated the same.
But I do agree that on the whole white people get cut breaks where minorities would not. I just don't think the crack/coke example is a very strong one.
Would you like to expand on those? I don't see why crack would be any worse than normal coke. In fact, considering the effects are significantly shorter it seems much more suitable for a productive lifestyle.
I was under the impression (maybe untrue) that it was more intense/addictive, but maybe that's just media bias working on me.
I don't believe it's significantly more addictive though, it's just more affordable to the most vulnerable demographics due to the smaller dosages.
Many of the laws tough on crack cocaine were brought in during the 80s and 90s when crack was thought (perhaps accurately) to be tearing African American communities apart, and many of the campaigners for the tough laws were African American community leaders.
Says who? You?
And even still, couldn't you say that the harsher sentencing guidelines around crack are to blame for that?
It's the unfortunate historical circumstance of race having become a fairly reliable marker for class. This is in turn a holdover from race having become a fairly reliable marker of slave status. I've come to think of many of the stickiest problems of the 21st century as holdovers from a past world that had the morality of Game of Thrones.
Americans confuse a former iconography (civil rights era) with existing circumstances. Today they have a class divide, not a racial one. That many POCs are in one class and not another is misdirecting idealism. The plight of urban blacks is so well documented that it is a television trope, but the poverty that exists in the countryside and even entire cities stagnating and evidence of decay is more or less ignored e.g. Note how the Tiny House movement is an attempt for 'middle class' poor mostly to differentiate themselves from 'those people' living in trailer parks (who in turn would be appalled if they were conflated with those living in section 9). Presiding over it all is of course the spread of the gated communities. This is all an emergent class structure similar to the one that developed in Europe centuries ago.
In my country, any time we hear of Southerners, the implication is immediately that they are red necks, racists, ignorant jesus freaks.
We don't get that from our television or radio. We get it from your movies, television and radio.
Many europeans don't realize they are inadvertently being drawn into (one side of) a culture war on a different Continent e.g. see BLM protests in London.
Up until the 1965 there was open discrimination towards minorities enshrined in law. That's a mere 51 years ago from today - well within the lifespan of Americans living now. The United States also has a well-documented history of active disenfranchisement of different races.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
Just about every crime statistic you'll come across also shows higher incarceration rates for minorities however the number of impoverished Americans of caucasian ancestry dwarfs any other minority group.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf
My own personal experience growing up in the American Midwest is that racism is alive and well in those areas. I vividly remember open and profane discussions about blacks amongst the local population being spouted by both adolescents and adults. This included the gratuitous use of what is colloquially referred to as the N-word (in the offensive fashion).
None of this is to say racism does not exist. I've heard plenty of talk about niggers and kikes before also. Plenty of racism in black and white communities is extant. I believe affirmative action is an example of, and an encouragement to, racism.
It is that class dwarfs all other issues in relation to inequality.
If you have the wrong accent, ghetto or southern, you aren't going anywhere in society. Getting elocution lessons and changing your name are tactics that would further your status in American society.
To put it in this way: perhaps at most hundreds of thousands to low millions are badly discriminated against on racial bias but anywhere from ten to hundred million people are affected by classism. Scale matters!
Look at how Hulk Hogan needed the backing of a billionaire, to get his lawsuit funded against Gawker. This is evidence of wealth discrimination (a big proxy for class), and we're talking about the justice system discriminating against a millionaire here! From here it can only get worse the poorer or lower your status is.
People who say "It's a class issue" seem to miss that it's much easier to recognize race than class.
People discriminated through redlining (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) would disagree that "It's a class issue":
>For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks.
People who read the stats showing the differences in sentencing between black males and white males, even when controlled for income, would hardly say "It's a class issue."
I am saying it mostly does not matter. I'm also aware this is not a popular view, but put that down to conditioning by the media. Their specialty is to draw attention to some things and not others depending on their bias after all. If the media people don't know, then you won't know, they only see the visible things and the death of investigative journalism and lack of serious big-picture reporting not in service to a paymaster has given them tunnel vision.
Suppose you 'solved' racism.
You would still have all the problems you have today. None of the education, poverty issues are going away just because of a lack of discrimination. Economics is tied up with class in a way it is not with race. The good news is that solving economic problems can solve for social issues like class conflict. Many migrants to America were from the bottom classes of Europe and they did very well for themselves when out from under the thumb of the old system.
Europeans have been dealing with class issues for centuries and we know what they look like. You don't have our history, yet, but you're going to. Social mobility in Europe is higher in Europe than in the US now, although perceptions have that in reverse.
If you believe otherwise then you believe that the US is following a different trajectory than nations before it, and I see no evidence for that belief.
And yes, a world where criminal laws are not able to be influenced by people that will profit from them is definitely one I want to live in.
If we can't, and Verizon/Cox also can't (they also have a conflict), who is left? People who either don't care or lack enough knowledge of the issue to make reasonable policy recommendations?
(Or anyone at the receiving end of military action, for that matter)
The point is that drawing a line between lobbying that affects prisons (nevermind a distinction between federal, local, and other institutions of incarceration) and lobbying that affects anything else can be a largely arbitrary affair.
Criminal laws are by far the most invasive laws we have on the books, and because of that they deserve special protections against those that would seek to exploit them.
The EFF, in contrast, has no such conflict of interest. Any organization which does not take government money is just a consumer of government services. Their interest is the same as everyone else's - encouraging the government to do the best job possible.
Strictly speaking, you can be a non-profit without any special tax treatment.
From the above comment:
>bail bond companies, criminal defense attorneys
>any company that derives most of its revenue from selling goods or services to ... inmates, or criminal defendants
All of those take no government money in the strictest sense.
So I don't think it - or a number of other socially corrosive aspects of the American political system - is likely to change without an amendment that would be extremely difficult to pass.
one of which will be to drastically limit actions possible for lobbyists
and then that generation of newly politically-aware young adults will have to tackle that
I think its a pursuable solution to address today's problem to get a better reflection of what American people want
Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to petition my elected representatives?
Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to organize with fellow citizens to petition my elected representatives?
Do I, an individual citizen, who owns a business, have a right to organize with fellow citizens who own similar businesses to petition my representatives?
The problem with lobbying is a fundamental issue with representative democracy, not with the American political system. Lobbying by monied interests is simply more overt in the American system. I can't think of a Western democracy where industry interests don't have a huge say in the legislative and even executive processes. From the perspective of the politician, they are looking out for their constituents by helping out industrial interests, because in their eyes, that means jobs and development.
I agree there is a huge problem with the outsized influence of industry in the political realm, but I think it's a very complicated problem to untangle. The only way we have to fight it is to organize ourselves, which is usually extremely difficult.
And maybe this is a bug in the system, but trying to fix it has some truly scary question marks attached.
So a group "Whigs for America" pooling donations is fine, but a for-profit corporation spending millions on lobbying would not be fine.
The difference being that the former group is a non-profit collection of people concerned about some aspect of government.
Whereas when for-profit entities funnel millions into lobbying, and we get profit-oriented results like this http://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-lobbies-lawmakers-ta...
Various Supremes expanded the notion that corporations are people, that money equals speech, and so forth. So many ways to rig the game in favor of capital (over democracy).
As an optimist, I predict the plutocrats will demand public financing of campaigns when they realized they're wasting their money. The money chase is an arms race with ever diminishing returns.
In the early USA it was considered antithetical to democracy precisely because it gives a great advantage to people with the financial resources to hire a lobbyist. So for over 200 years now, the word "lobbying" has already had a particular definition in the context of the money=speech debate. I don't think that trying to redefine the the term in the way you propose makes your point so much as it hinders it by muddying the waters.
You underestimate the will and anger of the American people.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys actively lobbies for drug law reform, sentencing reform, and against civil forfeiture, mandatory minimums, the death penalty, and overcriminalization: https://www.nacdl.org/criminal-defense/death-penalty. [1] They're on the front lines of trying to reform the justice system, and your proposal would silence them (because you could just as easily say they "benefit" from those reforms because their clients do).
[1] And the bar as a whole is probably way to the left of the average person on criminal justice issues.
I'd love to see all of these organizations lobby for laws that are likely to result in overall decreases in inmate counts, and/or lower sentences.
that and the they (politicians, police, etc) should be in prison themselves for their head nodding reaction to prison violence to include rape. just nodding your head and shrugging should never had been acceptable
The website http://www.fastadvocate.com talks a bit more about our capabilities.
hn (at) fastadvcoate (dot) com - you can email me here if you want to chat more.
Maybe domestic terrorism but not international. Private prisons only make money when people are captured alive and locked up on US soil.
Here is a link to a segment form 2011 about private prisons being good investments - http://www.cnbc.com/id/44677873
I'll keep looking for last years episode.
> The Barrier Fund will concentrate its net assets in industries that have significant barriers to entry including the alcoholic beverages, tobacco, gaming and defense/aerospace industries.
http://www.openculture.com/2013/01/hannah_arendts_original_a...
I'd also argue it's something we need to actively work to engineer out of society and humanity.
Some schools have contracts with companies, the government, or even have legitimate patents.
Please note that private institution and for-profit institutions are not the same thing.
I think the exception comes when the government contracts a business to run a school. This is a very different arrangement and is prone to all of the horrors that come along with the government signing contracts for various services. Once the contract is in place, given how slow the government is to act, all one needs to do is comply with the contract enough to not lose it outright.
No, they aren't. The vast majority of private schools are non-profit corporations.
This is far more false than true. Most private schools are, in fact, not-for-profit. All of the house-hold private university names, except for University of Phoenix, are all not-for-profit. Harvard, Yale, etc. are all not-for-profit.
> They are generally regarded as the best education you can get for K-12 schooling
The only for profit K-12 schools I know of are basically web-based GED prep courses. Not exactly the "best education you can get", but it'll get you that McDonalds gig.
This isn't even true of not-for-profit private schools. There are plenty of public schools, e.g. in wealthy suburbs, that are far higher quality than your average Catholic private school, for example.
> actually, wait, isn't that the difference between a college and a university?
No, not at all. The only difference is that a university a) has multiple colleges and b) offers graduate degrees.
Colleges and universities can be private for-profit, private not-for-profit, or public.
> For profit schools pretty much kick ass
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in higher education, for-profit universities are usually bottom of the barrel in terms of both prestige and quality.
Many private schools are not profitable institutions by a long shot. They could use a little bit more profit motive sometimes.
Many private schools are either:
* some religious institution, like a catholic school
* some really old private school that has kept on going because it's where all the rich kids go to with a relatively large endowment.
* opening with a specific charter in mind, like a sudbury school
A) Working as a prison guard/admin (in which your job security/salary increase with incarceration);
B) Hiring released convicts (in which your model becomes increasingly profitable as more of the labor force is branded as less hireable due to greater incarceration);
C) Supplying goods to prisons (in which your specialization at the problems of delivery to prisons becomes more valuable with greater incarceration)
D) Lobbying for tough-on-crime laws due to the above incentives, as e.g. CO interest groups have done [1]
But running the prison itself? "That's too much, man!"
Frankly, the anti-private prison movement is, IMHO, very confused. Numerous groups financially profit from the prison system even when they're publicly run, and such prisons produce the same egregious incentives to encourage more incarceration. (See the three-strikes lobbying.)
It seems like a way to exploit anti-market, anti-profit bias to get the masses enraged at an enormous red herring -- which, by the way, is still only 6-16% [2].
[1] http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/the_undue_influen...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/privatization...
We do need prisons. Some people are too dangerous to be allowed in society, and this will likely always be the case. So they must be guarded. (Technically, you're also guarding everyone else from them.) If it's immoral to work as a prison guard, it's also immoral to work as a policeman, or a firefighter, or a street cleaner - as your job becomes more secure when there are more criminals, or house fires, or litterers. Patent nonsense.
Hiring released convicts is also a good thing, in general - people go to prison, pay their debt to society, and come out. They need jobs, now.
And a person is going to need a bed sheet, a tooth brush, and toilet paper whether they're in prison or free.
D, I agree with, is wrong. And especially when done by the folks who do C.
The incentives are totally backwards. The state should be encouraging people to not be in prison, but instead we have monetary incentives in place for putting more people in prison and keeping them there.
There's really almost no scenario where I'm going to say "yeah I don't want to be in a position to make a downpayment on a house by analyzing and pursuing that profitable scenario"
whether long, short, no play, I'll take a look
how about you?
That's pretty significant - once you factor in their other revenue from private industry plus sales to foreign countries. So if you were going to categorize Boeing as anything in the context of the US gov alone, defense seems appropriate.
Additionally, even cutting that number in half (for the sake of accuracy) only reduces the total defense aerospace category by $4.6 million ($38m -> $33.4m total) which doesn't make those numbers drastically different, or that link much less persuasive.
The total revenue for for the entire Defense, Space, and Security portion of their business was only 30% of the company's total revenue, per their most recent 10-K filing. Further, reviewing previous filings it appears revenue for this segment has been flat for the past decade while revenue for their commercial aircraft operations has more than doubled.
Furthermore, I have no idea how that site arrived at the portion of revenue specifically from the DOD, as Defense, Space, and Security has a number of other government customers. All the sourcing information there is vague and generic.
> That's pretty significant - once you factor in their other revenue from private industry plus sales to foreign countries. So if you were going to categorize Boeing as anything in the context of the US gov alone, defense seems appropriate.
So, a company becomes a defense company just because most of it's government revenue comes from the DOD? It's not about "the context of the US gov alone", it's about the context of its government business with respect to its total business.
> Additionally, even cutting that number in half (for the sake of accuracy) only reduces the total defense aerospace category by $4.6 million ($38m -> $33.4m total) which doesn't make those numbers drastically different, or that link much less persuasive.
First, I would call cutting the total of the defense lobbying number by nearly 10% significant. Second, that is just an example. How many other Boeings are on that list? How much are they inflating that apparently simplistic analysis?
I only recently discovered this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox which I found very interesting.
that is so sad all the stats in the link you posted. hopefully with the rise of the internet and everyone becoming connected we can raise awareness and not let things like that happen anymore.
If the prison company was also in charge of sentencing people to prisons, I would get it. But as long as they merely implement the sentences the court system decides, what are the perverse incentives?
> Does your mind frequently attempt to lessen the blow by noticing the blow does in fact exist but is small?
All the time? Otherwise you'd constantly be overwhelmed by small but ultimately inconsequential stresses.
This sounds like an US metal band from '90s
My big complaint with private prisons, as they stand today, is that they tend to get paid based on heads and beds. As such, prisons are rewarded when prisoners behave badly (extending their stay), and when former prisoners reoffend (repeating their stay). There are no countervailing economic pressures.
If we want prisons to work, we need the economics to work in favor of societal goals. Everything else equal, a prison that generates low recidivism should get paid more than one that generates high recidivism, because they're eliminating future costs.
This is true, but we already ignore that for our prison population. Otherwise, our system would be less punitive and more aimed to reformation and building productive citizens.
Inmates sometimes end up staying prison longer than their original sentence because of crimes they commit in prison. The point I was making is that a private prison warden has much more of an incentive to punish those crimes severely than a public one does.
The plummeting stock will rebound the moment the market stops panicking, and some vultures will make a killing. It's big business, and they won't go quietly into the night.
http://www.nileguide.com/blog/2010/10/30/incarcer-vacations-...
I sure hope Hillary will continue this good work.
Note that it assumes that an investigation is being conducted for the purpose of submitting evidence to a court.
Enabling recording shouldn't take more than flipping a switch on a sip server and storage costs will be less than $1000 per decade.
If the goal of our system is to reform and reintegrate people who have committed crimes back into the society, maybe that's what we should be incentivizing.
We could develop quality measurements based on outcomes, and give bonuses based on the percentile prisons rank in.
Prisoners per 100,000 population: 1: Seychelles, 799 ; 2: United States, 698 ; 3: North Korea, 650 ; 4: St. Kitts and Nevis, 607 ; 5: Turkmenistan 583 ; 6: Virgin Islands (United States), 542 ; 7: Cuba, 510 ; 8: Rwanda, 492 ; 9: Guam (United States), 469 ; 10: El Salvador, 465
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
End the death penalty.
Unless you want to remain on the same list as a couple of medieval-minded countries, that is.
As a less flippant example, creating better conditions would mean less unrest, less unrest would mean you could get away with fewer staff. Staff expenses are usually one of the highest costs for a business, so cutting that would positively effect the bottom line.
http://www.vice.com/read/the-feds-are-suing-new-york-city-be...
"How is it that the United States, the land of the free, has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world? The answer is simple: Over time, the politicians have “criminalized” far too many aspects of people’s personal lives.
The failed War on Drugs is, of course, the greatest example. Well over 100 million Americans have, at one time or another, used marijuana. Yet, today, simple possession and use of marijuana remains a crime — despite the fact that a majority of Americans now favor its legalization.
And who is most harmed by the War on Drugs? Minorities, the poor, and anyone else without access to high-priced attorneys."
And now they are blaming private prisons? How about admitting the government was wrong on the war on drugs and harassing the poor with victimless crimes which resulted in a waste of trillions of dollars and millions of poor sent to prisons having their life ruined. Not gonna happen I know, or at least it will but very slowly and they will blame the private sector all the way during the process. Again, this is really sickening.
"Never in that process did I experience any pressure to “fill beds” in the private prisons we built. And if I had, it wouldn’t have worked. It might happen elsewhere, but it absolutely did not happen in New Mexico when I was Governor. At the time, the “per-prisoner” cost in the state prisons was $76 per day. The cost to house prisoners in the private facilities was $56 per day. Better service, lower cost."
But we should remember that solitary confinement is almost universally worse than other forms of punishment, in terms of the mental toll it takes upon the inmate. The Wikipedia page is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#Historica...
http://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop...
By way of example, a plurality of offenders awaiting trial in Cook County lockup are there for domestic violence.
Also the decline of the middle class began around this time period as well...
The paper also notes how incredibly difficult prosecutorial reforms would be to come by, which seems both true and depressing.
But ultimately, yes: the problem isn't the war on drugs or long sentences (at least not directly), but rather the staffing and aggressiveness of prosecutors.
[1] http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA%20Fact%20S...
Who is to decide what is "violent"? We could make the case that even white-collar crime is a form of violence (e.g. ruining people's life, etc)
> The 13 privately run facilities will not close overnight.
So the options are 1) decline to renew the contract, 2) renew the contract or 3) reduce the scope of the contract...when the contract is up for renewal, within the next 5 years?
So, what's the incentive for any federal official to select Option 1...or, barring explicit resources to make up the difference, Option 3 for that matter?
This is a "feel good" move. I predict little, if anything, will be changed as a result of this in 5 years' time.
Not "We", Bill. You did that. I hate it when presidents can get away with their actions by just a few words.
Why not simply demand the standards we want from the private contractors running the prisons, as a contingency to get paid or renewed?
That would require actual oversight, and is probably less fun for people like Sally Yates than having a convenient scapegoat to justify expansion of the Bureau of Prisons.
Would be a win win gamble. Steal a car. If you don't get caught you keep the car. If you get caught, collect money from the private prison. Private prison collects from the state...
ofcourse it could go wrong.
A teacher's union lobbying is acting in the interest of millions of American teachers. An oil company lobbying is acting in the interest of the CEO of the oil company.
Are businesses less democratic that unions? Almost certainly. Does that change whether or not their actions are moral? I would argue not. My step-father was a in a union for a long time, and spent time as an officer for the union. He didn't have much great to say about it.
The company does great when it pays its employees the smallest amount possible, gives them the least benefits, since every cent of extraneous labor cost is, by definition, extraneous lost profit.
Being honest though, yeah businesses will do shitty thing to employees when their interests don't align with the employees. That said, I've worked for healthy companies and sick companies, and I promise there's a world of difference there. Layoffs, outsourcing and training replacements are usually signs of sickness. The brand of medicine practiced by businesses is triage.
Both are incorrect characterizations. In theory, the actions of a union represent the interests of its members and the actions of a corporation represent the actions of its shareholders. In practice, the actions of both represent their boards' interpretation of what their members/shareholders want and what they think is in the best interests of their corporations[1]. Neither represents either the collective will of all its members or the whims of a single person.
[1] Unions in the US are 501(c) corporations and so have similar governing structures.
In theory, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In practice, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In theory, the head of a corporation is the head of a corporation and may do whatever he likes so long as he and a small cabal of directors wish. In practice, the very few executives at the top of a large corporation run it like a dictatorship, and they primarily serve their own interests -- not the interests of the employees or the shareholders. And even when they do act in the interest of shareholders, that's simply a code word for "a tiny group of wealthy elites" -- shareholders are wealth holders, so invariably even the most honest and earnest CEO will be acting in the interest of large amounts of wealth (oligarchy), not large amounts of people (democracy).
I looked for but haven't seen any statistics, but I've heard of horror stories emanating from non-private state-run prisons just as from private prisons.
This is tautological.
We ask that you comment civilly and substantively, and if you've expressed your views that way and the comment still receives downvotes then you should let it stand so that the conversation can continue. The community will often provide corrective upvotes—even in the midst of disagreement—but this can't happen if you've edited out your comment.
What a delightful non-sequitur. What problem were you trying to fix by scrubbing your words from view?
that green account hadn't (when I looked) said anything worth downvoting, yet had been downvoted across most of their comments.
That's hostile and unwelcoming, and it's not surprising they've reacted as they have.
Remember, the guiding principle behind the content on HN is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
I've read through your comment threads to try and understand why you feel this to be a hostile place.
Personally, I'm quite sympathetic to Milton Friedman's ideas, along with Hayek and other prominent free marketers, and I know that many others on HN are too. I doubt that many people are downvoting you merely for expressing pro-free-market positions.
I can only see a couple of comments of yours that are being downvoted, but because you removed the content I can't tell whether or not that was fair.
What I can say is that whilst some people will downvote a comment just because they disagree with it, more people will do so because the commenter conveys a bad attitude, and is contributing to the very hostility of which you're complaining. I can't say if that's the case in this particular instance, but given how quick you're being to claim victimhood status, I think it's possible.
Why not look at the positives: your account has been active for just 9 days and you already have over 120 karma points. That doesn't sound too unwelcoming to me.
A few downvotes on comments are no big deal; people have all kinds of different reasons for downvoting, and they're nothing to do with you, but rather how you make the voter feel.
In the past I've been quite vocal with some personal insights on health/medical topics, which have sometimes attracted some downvotes, I gather because they're a bit far outside the mainstream for some people to be willing to accept.
But I don't mind; it forces me to keep researching and challenging my knowledge, and working harder to present my positions in ways that are more persuasive, whilst also accepting that some people will simply never be persuaded, no matter how well I do (which is equally true of certain economics concepts).
So please, try not to be too down on the place just because of a few downvotes, and remember that if everyone tries their best to present their ideas in an informative and gracious manner, HN will be an increasingly worthwhile place to discuss interesting and challenging ideas, and we'll all be better off.
It wasn't, for the first comment I saw. That comment was making reasonable points in a reasonable way.
> What I can say is that whilst some people will downvote a comment just because they disagree with it, more people will do so because the commenter conveys a bad attitude, and is contributing to the very hostility of which you're complaining. I can't say if that's the case in this particular instance, but given how quick you're being to claim victimhood status, I think it's possible.
You should probably avoid judgemental comments about another poster, especially when you didn't even read their fucking comments.
Personally, I'd rather this site be an open forum for discussion than a vehicle for plugging our ears and hearing what we want to hear. As such, I really wish I could view all of the redacted comments on here.
Just because somebody doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they should get downvoted.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
You respond in anything other than an obsequious manner and you will be kicked while the people engaging in name calling, harassment and stalking (all of which I've experienced on this site in the past) or threatening (Something I've seen moderators do) will get a pass.
I spent spent several minutes reading his past comments and his bio. The patterns of adopting victim status and of reacting to individual comments/downvotes by tarring the entire HN community with the same brush are plainly evident.
As I said, there's a good chance I would have been supportive of his position, had I had a chance to read it. Even if I disagree with the substance, I'll happily defend/support someone expressing a contrarian view if they're gracious and well-intentioned in their conduct, and I know I'm far from being alone in that regard.
The good news is that 20yrs_no_equity seems to be back in strong form making good comments and getting a decent load of new karma in just the past 24 hours, so all seems well.
The culture here is faux intellectual where "civil and substantive" is "valued" only when they agree with the ideology. A little bit of deviation is allowed so long as the posters are sufficiently obsequious. If this were not a filter bubble you could criticize a YC company or even YC without being threatened.
But since those who agree with the party line are immune from these threats they do not post "civil and substantive" responses (you are an exception even though I am disagreeing wit you you've clearly tired to be fair) and far too many of the responses to my posts have been... patronizing, obnoxious or intellectually bigoted.
You say "gracious and well intentioned in their conduct"... you should be going after those who are not gracious or well intended in their conduct who are expressing views you DO agree with, not the contrarian ones. The contrarian ones you should give a wider birth. Right now its reversed... you have to be obsequious to express a contrarian view, and those who express the party line view get away with murder. This hypocrisy, especially coming from moderators, pisses me off, especially when wrapped with the smug self satisfaction that is so common on this site. (Example the "civil and substantive" threat above, which is pretending not to be a threat, and thus gives cover for pretending like it isn't a threat but the threat is obvious to the intended target.)
Which means that over the next five years, the govt. will continue to use facilities that "are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government," and with no real cost benefit.
* Paying out a large number of contracts which have cancellation clauses (don't complain too much about these, the companies at the other end of the contract made good faith investments due to them) * Quickly finding people to handle all of those prisons
Alternatively you can simply let each individual contract fail to renew which allows you to take your time finding replacements for everything you need.