posted
I wonder if these quotas refer to the state being required to send a % of people convicted to the private prisons rather than sending too many to public facilities.
So rather than there being no inmates to send, and the state getting sued, instead if the state sends 100 people to prison they have to send 70% of them to these private facilities.
Dunno. It would be nice if the actual contracts were comprehensibly summarized rather than just one part.
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: I wonder if these quotas refer to the state being required to send a % of people convicted to the private prisons rather than sending too many to public facilities.
Would that really be much better? It would still mean that states would be pressured to find enough prisoners to fill those private facilities.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: I wonder if these quotas refer to the state being required to send a % of people convicted to the private prisons rather than sending too many to public facilities.
Would that really be much better? It would still mean that states would be pressured to find enough prisoners to fill those private facilities.
Wouldn't it mean that if the state doesn't convict people, then they don't pay anything to the private prisons?
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
Huh? If it doesn't convict people, then they don't go to prison, and if they don't go to prison, then the prison doesn't fill its quota and the state pays a fine or is sued.
And I'm not sure why you're assuming it works that way. I thought it was pretty clear from the article that the quota is for prison occupancy, not for the percentage of people convicted who get sent to a private prison.
I mean, if you were a private prison company and were writing a contract with a quota, would you word it so that the state could get out of the quota by just convicting fewer people? That doesn't really make sense to me—the company gets paid based on how many people are incarcerated in its prisons, so it wants to make sure it's maximizing the use of its facilities so it can stay profitable.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I agree the article makes it sound like what you are describing. But I have no clue how reliable rollingout.com is, and I'm always suspicious when an article talks about how the mainstream media is afraid to tackle this topic.
It seems counter-intuitive that the state would willingly allow itself to become so legally vulnerable to suits on something like this.
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
Well, that assumes a few things (setting aside questions of the story and the website): one, it assumes this deal was negotiated in good faith on behalf of the people. I am deeply reluctant to rely on the good faith of people who voluntarily corporatize prisons for profit. It's frankly a disgrace that we even hand such things off to the private sector.
Second, it assumes that the state is worried it will ever have difficulty meeting those set rates.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: I agree the article makes it sound like what you are describing. But I have no clue how reliable rollingout.com is, and I'm always suspicious when an article talks about how the mainstream media is afraid to tackle this topic.
It seems counter-intuitive that the state would willingly allow itself to become so legally vulnerable to suits on something like this.
It's unconscionable that the state would agree to tie profit motive to high recidivism in the first place. We live in an immoral world.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
When we contract for a certain volume of parts at GM with a supplier and then there's a volume reduction, it's usually understood that we pay a penalty for it, since suppliers give us pricing based on being able to amortize their costs given a certain program length and volume. That translates to higher costs to us per piece.
From a corporate perspective, if the state promises the prison a certain volume in order to get a "piece price" per inmate, then yes, they'd have to pay a penalty for not meeting their volume, otherwise the private prison complex loses some of their profit margin.
The state should just pay the penalty. It looks pretty simple to me.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Legally, it's pretty cut and dried. Of course, it exposes the horrible ethics of a private prison system and helps to demonstrate why that's a bad idea.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'm not necessarily sure I have an automatic problem with private prisons.
Private prisons AS THEY EXIST NOW are horrible violators of human rights and decency. From what I can tell, there is absolutely NO oversight. It doesn't seem that the government is doing anything at all to audit the prisons to make sure they are following THEIR end of the contract to take good care of the prisoners placed under their supervision.
Government just wants to write a smaller check and wash its hands of the responsibility they owe the prisoners to make sure they are being humanely treated. If private prisons WITH the cost of oversight are too expensive, then they should just go back to public prisons. If prisons can make it work for less money and give the right level of care, then that's fine too.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
The title "Low crime rates bad for business for white-owned private prisons; they demand states keep them full" is kinda weird.
As I understand it, many of these private prisons are publicly traded and we don't generally track the race of people buying equity on stock exchanges.
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