Comment by lectrick | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lectrick | Hacker News Reader

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The problem with private prisons is the conflict of interest.

As a private for-profit prison employing what is effectively cheap slave labor, you have zero incentive to actually reform or to reduce the amount of people who become imprisoned or the amount of time they are imprisoned for. You are in fact financially incentivized to do the opposite; classic perverse incentive.

As someone else in here posted, The Corrections Corporation of America noted relaxation of drug enforcement efforts as a RISK FACTOR in their 2011 10-K filing:

http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?f...

"The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws."

Does this not scream "conflict of interest not in the interest of the greater good" to you? It does to me.

For an example of what happens when you allow this on a larger scale, see North Korea. Not a country anyone should be taking after!

For what it's worth, I just so happen to have initiated a monthly $100 donation to http://innocenceproject.org/ just this morning after reading this article:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/23/fbi-evidence-...

> The problem with private prisons is the conflict of interest.

And ought to be outlawed for this very reason, IMO.

private prisons seem to be the perfect example of when ethics are more important than profit motive

And when all costs (even extraneous societal ones) are considered in an all encompassing cost model, outlawing them would be the optimal course of action, anyway

The price of some things just seem severely disconnected from their actual value (or lack thereof)

Why ethics is more important with prison than with other things, like finance, health, food, drink, etc.? I would assume if I let somebody cut up my body or brain while I'm unconscious and pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, I'd be a bit worried if the said person had bad ethics, wouldn't you? Still, I see not many are having problem with brain surgeons not being government employees, as far as I can see.

>> And when all costs (even extraneous societal ones) are considered in an all encompassing cost model, outlawing them would be the optimal course of action, anyway

That would sound much stronger if it were backed by an actual consideration of the cost in an actual model, rather than a blanket unsupported statement of the outcome.

>> The price of some things just seem severely disconnected from their actual value (or lack thereof)

Or maybe their price reflects the actual value instead of the value you think they should have. How do you discover the actual value (not for you personally, but for the thing that concerns the whole society) anyway? Do you hold a vote? What if vote goes in favor of privatized prisons?

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