
The Economics of the American Prison System - mcarvin
http://www.smartasset.com/blog/news/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system/
======
wtvanhest
This article has a lot of numbers but it doesn't seem to answer 2 questions
which are far more important:

1) Are privately run prisons better for the good of society than publicly run
prisons? What does the research say? How biased is the research? etc.

2) More importantly, regardless of whether they are private or public prisons,
how do we get less people to be living in them? What are our other options?

Last time on HN I asked this and the answer was, "support NORML". I then went
and tried to find other organizations looking to make sweeping changes. I was
not successful.

The problem with NORML is their image. No serious person in business can
support an organization that uses a POT leaf as their symbol and seems to be
primarily an organization for hippies to sit around and talk about the
government. I realize that their image may not be their reality, but I can't
write a company matched check to them without people wondering "what I'm
smoking".

So... The question I am asking is, what can I do about one of the largest
human rights atrocities ever committed by the United States, my country? Its
obvious that at the very least we can move a lot of people to different types
of facilities. We can probably do a lot more than that, possibly reversing 45
years of discriminatory drug laws and possibly taking increased societal risks
to reduce the amount of years the average American spends in prison.

I'm somewhat distraught that this problem exists but I haven't come up with a
solution yet.

Anyone out there have any ideas on who I can support or what can be done?

[ADDED] The Norml image problem is probably bad on the west coast, but is a
deal breaker on the east coast.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>1) Are privately run prisons better for the good of society than publicly run
prisons? What does the research say? How biased is the research? etc.

IMO, Absolutely not.

>2) More importantly, regardless of whether they are private or public
prisons, how do we get less people to be living in them? What are our other
options?

Answer jury summonses. Learn about jury nullification. Pay attention to local
elections.

> I then went and tried to find other organizations looking to make sweeping
> changes. I was not successful.

The Innocence Project of Texas
[http://www.ipoftexas.org/](http://www.ipoftexas.org/)

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [http://www.leap.cc/](http://www.leap.cc/)

~~~
wtvanhest
Hey, thanks for your comment about LEAP. I had heard of them in the past, but
didn't consider them. That may be where I make a donation, but the issue again
is that the organization is about prohibition. In an ideal world, the
organization would be fighting for human rights and addressing prohibition as
the lowest hanging, and first fruit to take off the tree.

The Innocence Project is amazing, but does not address the widespread solution
we need. A noble organization, ABSOLUTELY!

As for your first comment:

 _> 1) Are privately run prisons better for the good of society than publicly
run prisons? What does the research say? How biased is the research? etc. IMO,
Absolutely not._

This is the general opinion of HN, but is it the truth? I'm sure someone has
addressed this opinion with honest analysis, but I don't know where it exists.
Stating that "they are making a profit" is not good enough because there is
more to the question than that.

Thanks again for pointing to LEAP. That is definitely a better marketed
organization than NORML.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I know you hate the "they are making a profit" argument, but please consider
the economic forces at play. This is a cohort that has almost no voice with
which to protest their treatment, so every effort is likely to be made to
drive down costs. Private prison oversight is fraught with problems. It's also
not great for staff. It's a bad place to have "market forces" Take some prison
manager who needs to fill beds to get his income up, what can he do? Increase
reporting of crime inside the prison (assaults, contraband, etc) or find some
county/state with extra inmates. What if they don't have any? Get them to
"find some" It happens. These folks cover some of it at least for Texas.
[http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/](http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/)

------
arbuge
Alot of these articles miss an important part of the equation by just looking
at the direct costs to taxpayers to run prison facilities. There are alot more
costs to the incarceration mentality than just that.

There is the cost of the entire justice system - police, judges, attorneys,
and so on.

Add to that the lost productivity of inmates who could be holding down jobs
instead of just twiddling their thumbs.

Then you have costs borne by the inmates' families to visit them, make up for
their absence etc.

I think the overall cost to American society from locking up so many people is
staggering when you add it all up. Unfortunately people still vote for
politicians who promise to be "tough(er) on crime" and the cycle continues...

~~~
jiggy2011
But then you need to offset that against the damage that would be done if that
person was not incarcerated. The $ amount of damage a car thief can do in one
month is very high.

~~~
cheeseprocedure
The article specifically mentions incarcerations skyrocketing as a result of
the drug war. Throwing petty dealers in prison is not an effective use of
taxpayer dollars.

~~~
jiggy2011
Bear in mind that drug dealers are not known to be the most civic minded
people and likely commit other offenses. Drug dealing is just what they got
busted for.

I've known areas of my town get dramatically safer after some big drug busts.
The drug trade has significant externalities.

~~~
deelowe
If it wasn't illegal, there would be no illegal drug trade. Most drug related
offenses are during nonviolent events. Drugs are popular in low income areas
which is also where there's a lot of other crime. Decriminalizing drugs won't
change this, but it will allow the system (legislators, police, & judges) to
focus on the crimes that do harm society. Take that to it's logicial
conclusion and it's not hard to arrive at the decision that the war on drugs
is bad for society.

~~~
jiggy2011
But what do these drug dealers turn their attentions to? Most of them don't
have the education to make similar quantities of money in a 'straight'
industry.

~~~
sethrin
Statistically, and in my experience, drug dealing is not a violent crime.
They're not going to start knocking over convenience stores. Some of them
might scrape together enough capital to start a retail store. Prices and
profits are going to take a long time to fall, so most of them will just keep
doing what they're doing, except with a little less risk, and they'll be able
to keep their cash in a bank, and theoretically pay taxes on it. If things
reach the point where it's not really profitable any more, then those people
will have to get a real job.

The idea that they will turn to some other criminal pursuit...yeesh. It's like
you've never even met any dealers. Imagine that tomorrow, the government made
your job illegal. Would you be like, "Well, that does it. I guess I'd better
start brushing up on my raping, murdering, and insider trading," or would you
maybe not go all-out breaking whatever laws you could? It may shock you to
realize that _because_ the hypothetical dealer is breaking the law in one
respect, he is best served by not breaking the law in any other respect, in
order to not draw attention to himself.

Lastly, we don't have to speculate what will happen, there are countries which
have decriminalized drug use -- US states too. Marijuana has been
decriminalized in Alaska for almost 40 years, although no one seems to know
this. The sky has stubbornly refused to fall.

~~~
jiggy2011
Perhaps there is the odd hippie selling homegrown ganja out of his greenhouse
who has never been in a fight in his life, but drug gangs control a massive
amount of the trade from production to distribution and are certainly happy to
use violence if required.

Violence may not be required however in cases where everyone is already scared
witless of them. Drug crime and other crime go hand in hand.

If you legalize drugs completely , then serious businesses run by people with
MBAs , Venture capital, marketing teams, legal departments etc come into the
game. Rather than street level violence, battles are not fought in patent
courts and with government lobbying.

Those who are currently dealing drugs don't know how to play this game and
will lose.

They can't go and get a straight job because they have no provable work
history, probably a criminal record and few contacts outside of the
"underworld". They also have become accustomed to a lifestyle of nice cars and
(possibly multiple) high maintenance girlfriends, so McDonalds isn't going to
cut it.

So they will look for other lucrative opportunities where the MBAs don't want
to compete with them (because it is illegal).

~~~
sethrin
"Perhaps there is the odd hippie selling homegrown ganja out of his greenhouse
who has never been in a fight in his life..." You don't know what you're
talking about.

"Drug crime and other crime go hand in hand." [Citation Needed]

"Those who are currently dealing drugs don't know how to play this game and
will lose." And then get a real job.

"They can't go and get a straight job because they have no provable work
history, probably a criminal record and few contacts outside of the
"underworld". They also have become accustomed to a lifestyle of nice cars and
(possibly multiple) high maintenance girlfriends, so McDonalds isn't going to
cut it." You have no idea what you're talking about. The margins are not that
high.

Your image of drug dealers applies to an extremely small minority. You must
only know what these people are like from TV.

~~~
jiggy2011
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War)

~~~
sethrin
Are you joking, racist, or just stupid? Do you imagine we have jails all over
the country brimming with Mexican cartel lords? Are drug-dealing latinos
installed on every corner like street lights, all through the US? What does
the word "minority" mean to you? I will give you the benefit of the doubt by
assuming that you're not intentionally being racist, and by assuming that you
actually live in some area that has some sort of a problem with organized
crime. This is far from true for most of the US.

~~~
jiggy2011
I don't see where I claimed any of those things, especially how my claims are
racist?

You claimed that drug dealing is a non violent activity. I showed an example
of where that is demonstrably not the case. Roughly 65% of the coke in the US
comes through mexico where it is causing serious violence.

In my home country (UK) we also have problems with violence and intimidation
from drug gangs in many deprived areas.

------
danmaz74
I remember when I first saw the movie Robocop, and I thought: Privatized
police force? Come on, not even in the USA the "markets will fix everything"
ideology could go so far.

Well, this isn't very far from that.

By the way, spending less on rehabilitation doesn't just save money now, it
also brings higher recidivism and so makes for a healthier future market for
these corporations...

~~~
jonnathanson
_" I remember when I first saw the movie Robocop, and I thought: Privatized
police force? Come on, not even in the USA the "markets will fix everything"
ideology could go so far."_

The CCA logo (as seen on the flag) even looks vaguely OCP-ish, like something
out of the particularly '80s vision of the corporate future as envisioned in
the original Robocop.

 _" spending less on rehabilitation doesn't just save money now, it also
brings higher recidivism and so makes for a healthier future market for these
corporations..."_

Exactly. And let's not forget that these same corporations who run prisons
also lobby for harsher sentencing, mandatory minimums, looser prison labor
laws, and so forth.

It's a sticky subject because nobody -- politician, man on the street, mother
of children, or law-abiding citizen -- wants to come right out and say that he
or she is advocating for prisoner's rights. Nobody's ever won an election
being "soft" on crime (at least not to my knowledge). So the prison-industrial
complex has it pretty easy, as far as built-in political incentives are
concerned. Ultimately their agenda is self-fulfilling, and the social
externalities are highly negative. Costs may be cut in the short run, but as
you suggest, recidivism means nobody in the system is ever really going to
escape it -- hence, we're shortchanging the future to save pennies in the
present.

~~~
john_b
> _" It's a sticky subject because nobody -- politician, man on the street,
> mother of children, or law-abiding citizen -- wants to come right out and
> say that he or she is advocating for prisoner's rights."_

True, but part of the problem is framing. Since most people won't make
political decisions based on careful reflection, you have to have an emotional
pull of some sort. Language like "tough on crime" and "keeping communities
safe" frames the debate as those who value enforcing the law and safety versus
their opponents, who presumably don't.

Instead of playing that game, what aspiring policians will have to do is frame
these kinds of things in terms of human rights, not prisoner's rights. Simply
accepting the phrase "prisoner's rights" implies that rights can be doled out
by government based on how it chooses to classify citizens. This kind of
framing can work:

 _Political challenger, to incumbent:_ "Do you support human rights?"

 _Incumbent:_ "Of course."

 _Challenger:_ "Do you consider prisoners to be human beings?"

 _Incumbent (worried look):_ "Well...yes, though I would add that..."

 _Challenger:_ "Then why do you support things such as prolonged solitary
confinement of prisoners--which is widely agreed to be a form of torture--and
the outsourcing of our justice system to race-to-the-bottom private
corporations that are held to lower standards and have far less oversight?"

The really sad part is that this is just as disingenous as the narrative
supplied by the supporters of the prison industrial complex. But if you want
to change things from within the political system you just have to convince
voters the other guy is the bad guy.

~~~
malandrew
How would you change the language to support sending fewer people to prison?

~~~
gizmo686
Go after specific laws. Specifically with drug laws, a strong case can be made
about the nanny-state; it seems like a lot of the core republican (especially
the libertarian wing's) message would make our current war on drugs a prime
example of our big-government nanny-state.

------
VLM
The prison industrial complex comes up once in awhile on HN. Its hard to think
of a startup topic. Mostly because prisons (including private ones) have been
around so long.

Maybe a startup designed solely to imprison IP violators, or solely to hold
patent violators or people who break private website terms of service or
something like that.

Maybe a robot guard (or guard tower) to be teleoperated from cheap labor in
India, or not operated at all, just pattern match and shoot people who look
like they are violating the rules.

Something like the MOOC "movement" but dedicated to selling to private prison
administrators for their prisoners?

Implementing something like "a scanner darkly" is going to happen anyway,
startup or not.

Maybe a more advanced higher tech house arrest ankle bracelet system?

~~~
listd
:-) True! (interesting fact about ankle bracelets for house arrests: they were
inspired by Spider-Man comics)

------
spindritf
> Some states, like Indiana have managed to keep prices low at around $14,000
> per inmate. While states like New York pay around $60,000 to keep its
> citizens behind bars.

OK, but what's the benefit? What is the damage to society and economy an
average criminal causes over the course of a year? How much in property, lost
trust, mental and physical injuries, increased spending on security, etc. does
it cost to have the guy on the loose?

How much of that benefit are prisons eating? I'd love to see an analysis but
my guess would be that housing an inmate for ~30k is a bargain.

~~~
ollysb
> What is the damage to society and economy an average criminal causes over
> the course of a year?

Those incarcerated for drug use could potentially be making the government a
profit. The only negative effects on society are associated with the supply
line, not the individual's behaviour. If some drugs were legalised the net
benefit to society would be positive, increased income via taxation and
improved relations between the police and the public(a large portion of which
are drugs users).

------
fnordfnordfnord
I was a prison guard in Texas for a few years (TDCJ, not private). AMA

~~~
tseabrooks
What can you tell us about the quality of life for prisoners in TDCJ?

Where is the line between giving prisoners something to do vs giving them to
much?

Are we working on ways to keep prisons from being "Criminal University"?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>What can you tell us about the quality of life for prisoners in TDCJ?

Awful, No air conditioning, terrible food, not enough to do, terrible medical
care, exactly what you would expect in Texas, only worse.

>Where is the line between giving prisoners something to do vs giving them to
much?

Idle hands and so forth. Prison officials have very little with which to
manage inmates' behavior. Anything that can stave off the intense boredom of
incarceration would probably help in the management of prisons. Unfortunately
for everyone, the Wyndham School System program (education for inmates) was
recently cancelled in Texas to cut expenses. I expect that will just make it
even more difficult for future ex-convicts to succeed in any meaningful way
after release, increasing recidivism.

>Are we working on ways to keep prisons from being "Criminal University"?

I'm not sure what you mean, but we sure do seem to produce a lot of inmates in
this country.

~~~
Zikes
By "Criminal University" I assume they are referring to the phenomenon of a
person going to prison for something minor, e.g. like stealing a bike, and
coming out with intimate knowledge of how to commit more serious crimes.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
In that case, yes, it's a real phenomena. People go in for minor things. They
make contacts (network). After release many have no (real) alternative but to
participate in criminal activity since they cannot find a job due to their
background check.

------
btilly
I don't care how interesting the article is. I do not want to deal with the
spammy popups.

~~~
philipcamilleri
Sorry about that. We've disabled that right now...

~~~
burkemw3
I just got the popup twice...

------
mathattack
I would like to see data on whether these private prisons are unionized. It
seems like the prison unions are out to keep their services needed.

[http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/the-role-of-
the-p...](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/the-role-of-the-prison-
guards-union-in-californias-troubled-prison-system/)

[http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-
snake-h...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-
california-s-prison-guards-subvert-democracy)

------
samolang
The author mentions private prison scandals, but neglects to mention that
scandals occur in public prisons like [1] this one as well.

[1] [http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/04/23/25-correctional-
off...](http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/04/23/25-correctional-officers-
inmates-indicted-for-gang-activity-in-baltimore-jails/)

------
scilro
Meanwhile, the DEA is teaming up with the CCA.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Not too far from the truth. Here a couple of judges busted taking bribes for
filling private prisons.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-10747919](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10747919)

[http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/luzerne-s-other-
disgraced-j...](http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/luzerne-s-other-disgraced-
judge-a-study-in-contrasts-1.1205381)

Also this:
[http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/](http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/)

------
tptacek
There are lots of places besides HN to talk about stuff like this. Every time
we try to talk about it here, the level of civility on HN degrades. Sometimes
just a little, sometimes by a lot. I assume that's one of the reasons that
articles like this are discouraged by the site guidelines.

I flagged this post.

~~~
pstuart
True, and I admit to getting hot under the collar.

But I would argue that in a way that articles like this should get viewed and
discussed by the HN crowd in the context of hacking civilization.

This particular subject absolutely defines the world in which we live in, and
a it's not a pretty picture. It happens because we let it, and we let it
because we collectively don't care. We collectively don't care because we
remain (intentionally) ignorant of the situation.

It's turtles of despair all the way down....

------
jivatmanx
Primarily a side effect of the war on drugs.

