Good. The incentives involved with private prisons are so obviously counter to the public good that it beggars belief that anyone would support them. Private prisons do not bear any costs of recidivism - they profit from it.
The second part of this is that public prisons suffer from the same problem as private prisons. Look at the prison worker's union and what money it spends on politics in California. It basically backs every legislation that will increase prisoner counts.
Its not a public or private issue, it is, as you pointed out, an incentive issue. Sadly, the public sector incentives are just as bad.
That's not true. The amount of funds which goes in to this kind of lobbying matters.
With a private prison system you get not just the funds from prison worker's unions, but also those from the owners.
Woah, interesting concept, I had never even thought of that. That in mind, I am very opposed to private prisons for reasons found scattered throughout this thread.