From: "William Robb"
From: "Bob Sullivan"
Graydon wrote:
>The US generally runs prisons as profit centres.<
I don't think so. Maybe loss centers or money pits.
Are they run as privately owned institutions under contract to the
government or are they owned by the government?
If it's the former, then it is a for profit system (though not profiting the
taxpayer).
There was a significant experiment in "privatization" of prison systems
during the Reagan/Bush I administrations, mostly at the state level. For
profit corporations bid on projects to build and run prison facilities,
with the idea they could do it "more efficiently" and make a profit
while lowering the costs paid by the government.
The idea was it costs the government $50,000 per year per prisoner, and
the private companies were saying they could do it if the government
would pay them $30,000 per year per prisoner, or some such savings to
the taxpayers.
Most of the projects eventually ended up in bankruptcy, with the
government having to take control & operate the prisons, usually at a
higher cost - MORE than $50,000 per year per prisoner - than if they'd
built and operated the prisons themselves in the first place.
In the meantime the people who RAN the corporations walked away with a
pretty healthy chunk of change while their investors and the taxpayers
got the shaft ... again. That's pretty much the rule for how
privatization of government services works.
The new federal prison in, I think Illinois, that's going to be used to
house GITMO detainees (presumably after trial & conviction?) is a former
private "for profit" prison.
The real problem in the U.S. is we have too many people in prison who
shouldn't be there; people who society would be better served in the
long term if they were kept in their communities under intensely
supervised probation.
But that kind of probation system costs more to operate properly than
just warehousing prisoners.
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