That might be explained by the US prison system being one of punishment, not rehabilitation. [0]
I strongly oppose for-profit prisons, but the whole "prisons are big business!" trope the NYT likes to trot out is bullshit. For-profit prison companies are opportunists, taking advantage of the trend of growing prison populations combined with the heavy emphasis in the 1990's on trimming the number of public employees.
But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law#Enactment_by_.... Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
http://www.npr.org/2009/08/13/111843426/folsom-embodies-cali...
You can't get American voters to agree on anything by that kind of margin, other than apparently the idea that you should get life in prison for stealing a few hundred dollars each on three separate occasions.
Honestly, what really irks me about the "prison lobbying" angle is that it's just a way to shirk responsibility. "Oh, it's those lobbyists that are to blame, not my parents, friends, or me."
Then came the "Three Strikes You're Out" law in 1994. Offenders who had committed even a minor third felony — like shoplifting — got life sentences.
Voters at the time were inundated with television ads, pamphlets and press conferences from Gov. Pete Wilson. "Three strikes is the most important victory yet in the fight to take back our streets," Wilson told crowds.
But behind these efforts to get voters to approve these laws was one major player: the correctional officers union.
In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.
And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.
Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the union, says it does what is best for its members.
"We have advocated successfully for our members," he said.
... EDIT
You also show how it worked in Washington, which is a good comparison. Was there similar lobbying there? (This is an earnest question, I do not know the answer.)
Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
> Only about 8% of prisoners are held in for-profit prisons: http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...
That isn't quite correct. It's 8% as of 2009.
As of 2012, it's actually ~17%. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4843
> But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did
This I absolutely agree with.
> Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
In your haste to criticize the NYT, did you perhaps miss that such a target audience is precisely who they should be pointing out the deleterious effects of their voting patterns to?
> Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
Agreed.
But several million to get her to think, "Corporations are using prisons to needlessly jail people"? That could work.
Some convicts do spontaneously change and become rehabilitated, but no one has offered much evidence that they can engineer this change and induce it reliably. And yet the myth persists.
Medical science and psychology have failed to reliably treat much simpler mental illnesses (let alone cure), but somehow they can dig around inside someone's skull and cure something that isn't a mental illness at all, rather the predisposition to make bad, destructive, and illegal choices?
Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons, and instead put them back in society and growing the economy. There is a ton of money put into locking people up. It would pay for itself to figure out how to rehabilitated a small percentage of them.
There are already "twelve step" programs which are mandated by courts. Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
But instead the focus in the US is on punishment, victims rights, three strikes laws and being tough on crime.
This isn't a counter-argument. Lots of things that were science fiction 50 years ago are still science fiction today.
However, I will keep an open mind. If in the future someone claims to understand rehabilitation and can prove this, I will consider their work/theory. I will not "just try it anyway" today because of wishful thinking.
> Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons
Fine by me, as long as it doesn't involve science fiction. I even have some suggestions:
Legalize drugs. Don't decriminalize them. Don't just legalize marijuana either... legalize cocaine, heroin, meth. Pardon everyone for their drug crimes (but not violent crimes associated with drug dealing).
Do this, and you can substantially reduce both the number of people in prison, and the average time spent there. Low level drug dealers won't spend time in prison learning to be psychopaths. Drug users won't commit burglaries and theft trying to pay for their drug habit (if they'll do anything for a fix, anything includes scrubbing toilets).
Of course, this won't happen. People believe the television shows they watch where someone who uses meth once turns into a demon.
> Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
I agree. But this is a problem I think requires a working theory of mind/intelligence. (Funny how it's either another variation of the AI problem, or related to it, eh?) We don't have that.
> But instead the focus in the US is on punishment
This is because we are monkeys. I don't mean metaphorically, but literally. Monkeys have instinctual senses of justice that demand punishment and vengeance and so forth.
If you remove punishment from the equation, this would be bad. The state punishes so that the monkeys will feel as if justice has occurred, and will refrain from performing their own justice.
Do you want revenge killings and vigilanteeism to rise?