Our prison system is inhumane and our treatment of prisoners is torture. I don't doubt there will be a lot of resistance to cleaning the system up because basically everyone involved is guilty and won't like the idea of suddenly being vulnerable to being held accountable for what they've been doing.
There's still a strong culture in the US that fetishizes punishment. A disturbingly high number of people want criminals to go to prison and get beaten and raped. They don't care how many innocent people get caught up in it as long it isn't them personally and so long as at least some people they feel "deserve it" are being tortured. I'd like to think that those attitudes will change and eventually we'll start improving things, but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Poverty is the default state of humanity. There's no unspeakable violence in it. Not to mention that "poverty" in the US is a luxurious lifestyle by worldwide standards (source: I'm an immigrant, and not even from the poorest country by far).
It would be really strange if observing the default state of humanity would make humans sick.
Ditto for punishment - historically punishments have been much more harsh (the only modern innovation that I'd really support for violent and property crime is dealing with is reducing false convictions; 3-strike type laws deal with that well, I wish they were more widespread).
The mental health / politics correlation in the US, especially in recent years, seems to indicate that it's being excessively bleeding-heart that's making "us" sick.
> There's still a strong culture in the US that fetishizes punishment. A
No, you just don't understand the civilization you were born into.
It's not a fetish... it's the point. If government promises to punish transgressors, then individuals will refrain from vigilante justice. This punishment is done, because our monkey morality demands it.
There are a few secondary goals. We also seek to sequester the offender away from society, so they can't do more injury. We hope (mostly in vain) that public acknowledgement of the punishment acts as a deterrent.
> They don't care how many innocent people get caught up in it
Can't speak for anyone else, but I care about that. It's mostly easy policy fixes too. If prosecutors were barred from using plea bargaining (we don't have to ban it absolutely, limit it to 1% of the cases they see per calendar year), some large chunk of the wrongly-convicted would avoid that fate. Absolutely demolish bail bonding as an industry. Hell, if you really want to fix stuff...
Prohibit eyewitness testimony in court, including but especially confessions (they can be useful as investigative leads, but aren't evidence of anything except some really perverse human psychology).
Who am I supposed to talk to to get the policy fixes implemented?
Maybe it's not the attitude problem you think it is.
> It's not a fetish... it's the point. If government promises to punish transgressors, then individuals will refrain from vigilante justice.
Punishment itself isn't the problem, some people should be punished with prison time. The people who fetishize punishment aren't content with restricting people's freedom, keeping them separated from the their loved ones, and having years of their life lost. They know that prisoners are beaten, and raped, and kept in solitary for years, and forced to eat rotten food infested with maggots, and are denied basic hygiene or healthcare, and are being cooked to death in cells without AC, and they'll actively oppose any efforts to improve conditions for inmates. We knowingly allow prisoners to be tortured year after year and decade after decade and it isn't because nobody wants things to be that way.
> Who am I supposed to talk to to get the policy fixes implemented?
It's a problem because politicians know it's popular to be as tough on crime and as cruel to prisoners as possible. People like Joe Arpaio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio) get elected again and again because they're abusive sadists hurting the "right kind of people". If you can find someone willing to run on prison reform you can back them, but otherwise all you can do is reach out to your representatives. Your proposed policy fixes all seem like great ideas.
The Constitution* enshrines the right to face your accuser in open court. That to me seems proper; why do you propose to eliminate it (what gain do you expect)?
If you want to eliminate that right, there is a process for amending the Constitution laid out in the document itself.
The problem isn't so much the admitting of eyewitness testimony, it's the weight given to it and, in your example, the addition of racism that leads to false convictions. As long as there is racism, there will be false convictions.
No. As long as organic eyeballs and meat brains are involved, there will be false convictions.
Human memory isn't video recording. Eyewitness testimony has to be rid of, or we're all just going to keep suffering for its inevitable, constant, and all too common failures.
So you think video recording always shows the absolute truth and can never be misinterpreted?
Any evidence can be misinterpreted. While I agree that eyewitness testimony has been shown to be nowhere near as reliable as most people think, it still has value.
> The Constitution* enshrines the right to face your accuser in open court.
Sure. They'll get to see the face. Of course, for the vast majority of crimes, the accuser is the state.
> That to me seems proper; why do you propose to eliminate it
Because we don't allow dream interpretation, tarot card readings, or other nonsense to be admitted as evidence either.
You know how every few months you hear of some black man that has been in prison for rape for 30 years, until DNA evidence exonerates? Behind every one of those convictions there was some sobbing woman on the stands pointing a finger at him.
Eyewitness testimony is junk of the lowest grade, below even those tarot cards I joked about.
But yeh, they'll get to sit in the same courtroom with any accusers, we just won't let the accusers get up and make up bullshit that they believe are infallible memories. This isn't a constitutional issue. Legislation is absolutely permitted to set standards of evidence.
It seems to be changing slowly but surely, thankfully.
There was a recent post on Reddit made by a prisoner [1] (who was in for life for murdering his sister) who has a locker full of manga, books, MtG cards, and a tablet with minecraft (which he rooted to allow for sideloading of apps). He says he feels very comfortable with the prison life there. I never expected this from a prison in the state of Georgia of all places.
This is only one anecdote, but it struck me as surprising when I heard of it. The more we start to focus prisons on rehabilitation instead of just punishment, the better.
> [...] I was a young kid who thought I was smart and clever and thought I knew people. Prison dunked my head in a cold river of reality. Many people in these prisons have a strong criminal mindset. You learn by fucking up that there are always people who have had it worse, are more clever, stronger, but also more debased, cruel, and uncaring. From this though I have been forced to overcome my autism symptoms. I was thrown off by loud noises, physical contact, and was completely socially inept before I came to prison. Free world society softly caters to autistic kids but in prison you have no choice but to confront your mental health. In short, prison is an adverse environment which can bring out the good, or more often the bad, in people. As a young kid I learned quick that I couldn't rely on any staff or inmates as far as trust goes. I quickly saw I wasn't going to be babied and if I didn't fight for myself and who I was I would be lost. Not everyone becomes a paragon, very few do. [...]
Not sure what to make of him. He's very forthcoming about what he did, but evasive about the why.
I think he genuinely doesn't know, and he isn't being evasive so much as expressing his own confusion. There's video of his confession on YouTube and he just directly admits to murder. The whole thing is in a flat voice and he looks borderline catatonic. It's a really strange case.
He arguably belongs in a forensic mental health institution rather than a prison. Or maybe normal prisons should be more like hospitals.
> I have no reason, it was a normal night and I just... I just got up and shot her like I was getting a cup of coffee. I feel horrible for it but I make no excuses, I'm where I'm supposed to be living a life better than I deserve.
This is the most fascinating guy I've seen on Reddit in the past year.
Alas it appears that it is that way because the prison is extremely short staffed and they have to let a lot slide, rather than any progressive attitude toward prisoner reform.
The use of prison slaves is slowly changing. Some states have passed laws to ban the practice (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63578133) although even there enforcement needs a lot of work (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-for...) but I'm encouraged by the direction things are headed. It's an uphill battle since corporations are fighting like hell to keep their slaves. Big companies like aramark, mcdonald's, walmart, target, victoria's secret, microsoft, whole foods, starbucks, and wendys have profited heavily from the prison plantation system. It's impressive that there's been as much success putting a stop to it as there has been.
Before private labor, we put them on chain gangs, and deemed that inhumane when cars veering off the road would gouranga the entire crew.
We call it slavery, but is it? Yeah, prisoners make $1 an hour to work for private industry. That sucks for prisoners, sure, but they're being fed, housed, and receiving healthcare at taxpayer expense even without opting-in. The extra $6/hr they don't get paid subsidizes their stay...literally repaying their debts to society.
What's the real objection to this? Competitive disadvantage?
>but they're being fed, housed, and receiving healthcare at taxpayer expense even without opting-in
All slaves receive these things. Its in the interest of the slave owner to keep the slaves healthy enough to work. Modern companies shouldn't get a discount by using slave labor. If the prisoner wants to learn a "skill" that is profitable to a company then they should be paid the minimum wage.
Its less awful, but I also believe unpaid internships should also be illegal unless they are purely observational. If the intern is contributing in anyway to the profits of the company, they should be paid.
> All slaves receive these things. Its in the interest of the slave owner to keep the slaves healthy enough to work.
Sure, but unlike slavery, you get the food and housing independent of whether you lift a finger to do any work. The work is optional. It's rewarding if you do it. Working shortens your sentence. Work output never changes one's status as a slave.
Articles suggest prisoners who don't opt-in to work programs are penalized at parole hearings. This is a dishonest reframing of parole, something intended to be an earned benefit, not a clearance sale. The system is optimizing for prisoners who have been conditioned/rehabilitated into being functional in society-- the ones paroled demonstrated some willingness to play the same game as civilians, working to get ahead through their labor. They appear to have been broken of their criminal ways, so retaining them is expensive and unnecessary.
The ones who insist on avoiding work serve the duration of their actual sentence as proscribed. This is not slavery, it's literally the point of prison. You stay until your term expires or you demonstrate to the parole board that you've changed.
> I also believe unpaid internships should also be illegal unless they are purely observational. If the intern is contributing in anyway to the profits of the company, they should be paid.
I'd argue unpaid internships are worse. The intern doesn't need to prove any sort of reformation, nor are they being punished for crimes against society. They do not have food and housing provided for them. Not paying them is entirely exploitative.
> I also believe unpaid internships should also be illegal unless they are purely observational
In the US, it is already illegal, and has been this way for a while. The enforcement in practice is another story though.
Here[0] is the source with all nitty gritty, but a simplified tldr is that unless an intern’s output during the internship is not making money for the company and is pretty much purely an educational venture, the intern gotta get paid at least the minimum wage.
Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave. Slave owners may feed/house their slaves, and even pay them slave wages but none of those things make the slave any less of a slave.
> What's the real objection to this?
It's rare that someone asks what possible objection someone might have to slavery. Even if you thought that exploiting, abusing, and degrading enslaved human beings for profit wasn't morally abhorrent, there are purely economic reasons why slavery is a terrible idea. There are also purely selfish reasons to oppose it because if we allow it to happen to others it could just as easily be allowed to happen to you.
It's not even terrible unlikely that it will. The US locks up more of their own population behind bars than any other nation on Earth. There are plenty of entirely innocent people in prisons too. The best way to protect yourself against slavery is to make sure that enslavement isn't even an option on the table.
That said, there's no reason why that should mean that prisoners can't be employed by choice. If they were free to decide what type of work they wanted, and they were free to decline employment they wanted no part of, and they were provided the same pay for their labor as anyone else would be, and they were afforded the same protections against exploitation and hazardous working conditions as anyone else, then there'd be no harm in letting them make money and it'd be very helpful if they could put some money aside for the many expenses they'll be on the hook for after their release.
> Yes. When you are forced to work and aren't allowed to quit your job, you are a slave.
No. If there were forced-work programs, we wouldn't be arguing about slavery-not-slavery, we would be calling them concentration camps. Unlike the lies of Auschwitz, work will actually set you free.
Work is optional in prison. If anything, it's a privilege, since if you're enough of a problem it isn't even on the table for you. You are allowed to quit your job.
Black American slaves did not earn wages. Their sentence was indefinite. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed.
Auschwitz victims did not earn wages. Their sentence was terminal. As soon as they stopped working, they were executed.
American prisoners earn wages. Working reduces their sentence. They are eventually released from confinement regardless of output.
Prison conditions are unpleasant, but that's not the argument. American prisoners are not slaves.
I'm forced to work or I suffer "punishments" like starvation and homelessness, and I've had wages skimmed by an employer. We can all identify as slaves if we try hard enough.
>As soon as they stopped working, they were executed.
Whoa, hang on. I'm not a slavery apologist, but... are you sure? As in, routinely, not as a bizarre, rare event? Not events like lynchings, but just "well Old Tom here ain't producing anymore, time to string him up"?
I have read some of the work of actual slavery apologists, and one of the points often made is that laws prohibiting manumission of slaves were originally written in response to owners who would free their slaves when they were too old to do the work - and promptly dump them out with no money, no education, no place to live, and no skills beyond basic agricultural labor, to die. I could imagine that was an issue.
The wrongness of slavery is often talked about strictly in terms out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, though a point often made in early abolitionism was that the creation of an entire inheritable status of sub-citizens was evil in itself, regardless of how well or poorly the sub-citizens were treated. Also treated interestingly in Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker (which are not great books, but sure do give you some insight into Card's Mormonism), where the South remained royalist in the American Revolution. It certainly could have, if George III had better positioned his treatment of the colonies. The basic organization of the early South as an agricultural region centered on individual properties owned by some noble (who might or might not live there) and organized like medieval village life. Roads to get to neighbors were relatively unimportant, as water transport was the norm for both people and cargo. The entire coastal and tidewater area from the Sea Islands of Georgia to the Chesapeake worked like that, at least until colonists started trying to push past the limit of navigation (which made large plantations more difficult until you got south of the foothills of the Appalachians).
this analysis glosses over how you "find" these jobs (you become a felon for smoking weed or similar crimes) or if you're technically inclined, how you get into this type of job market: not voluntarily. it's n intricate system of exploitation.
criminalize strong healthy young men for petty reasons. put them into prisons, private ones, mind you, where there is profit from housing the workforce.
and then make them work "or else" again, no choice, no freedom
fwiw circulating a sea of hand guns keeps the criminality rate high.
nra, private prisons, prison factories dance a happy dance.
everyone profits off those "goddam n*ggas" (that was sarcasm)
and it's even subsidized, running prisons is expensive...
harsh punishment even for petty crime is da best for this, don't you ever start this crazy crime prevention social work resocialisation BS. it has socialism in the name already. that was sarcasm again.
its a set up for slavery, masked as "criminal justice"
Many corporations still use forced labor, even today, even in the US. If you want to fix the prison system, you'll be fighting against Walmart/McDonalds/others with deep pockets.
I can't tell if this is a joke, but in case it's in earnest the issue here is the prisoners are typically forced to work at well below market rates. Then usually much of it is withheld on top of that. It also does little to reintegrate them into society since the work experience isn't seen as valuable. The corporations and those with their hands in the prison system profit, society and the prisoners lose out.
The same movies are shown in Scandinavian cinemas, and the prisons there are most definitely not in any way similar. I believe it is part of the US mentality. Like the SUV, guns, "Freedom", etc. Hollywood portray the US, not the other way around.
> The same movies are shown in Scandinavian cinemas
Maybe it's better now but Scandinavia has had their moments of censorship keeping those "same movies" out of theaters. Sweden banned The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Mad Max, and even ET (for ages under 11). Norway banned Ichi the Killer, I Spit on Your Grave, and A Serbian Film.
I'm not sure what your point is, unless you are saying those few films are what made Scandinavian prisons different, and if that is your point then I have no idea how to reply...
> A disturbingly high number of people want criminals to go to prison and get beaten and raped.
I've heard this trope a lot, but I wonder, is there any data to actually back it up?
> They don't care how many innocent people get caught up in it
Here I'm certain there is no data to back up this point, anecdotally, this seems the opposite of the truth. Perhaps you just mean the prosecutors and not the citizenry in general?
I doubt you can get concrete data on point one, but it is a commonly repeated trope. At best many people are too okay treating prison abuse as a joke.
For the second point, many US Prosecutors are elected. They run on a "tough on crime" platform, and tout their successful conviction % as a key metric of success. Very little credence is given to anything else. It's not a direct poll, but it's more than 'no data'.
It seems reasonable to cite a high conviction rate as evidence of competence and success in your role as the state’s prosecutor of crimes against the people. It’s not the only metric to look at, but it’s absolutely a relevant metric.
Another commentator touched on how those stats can be misleading, so I want to stress that it is often touted as the only relevant metric. You never see it presented in context of total number of indictments, overturns on appeal, break downs by offense, etc. I'd even argue it's ONLY relevant in the context of other stats.
For example, the other issue I didn't see the other commentor speak on is it can lead to UNDER enforcement. It can create an incentive to ignore "complicated" wrong doing, or quickly dropping charges against those who plea bargain to preserve a high conviction rate, even if it's against the public interest.
So when you see "conviction rate" it's impossible to know if they're actually good at prosecuting. You can only tell they're good at identifying cases where a conviction is highly likely.
But then you also run into the issue of the plea deal.
A disturbingly high number of cases are plead out - in some states that number approaches 90%. This is more than any other country on earth, and by a huge margin. Many countries completely forbid plea bargaining, and most of those who allow it have strict rules on implementation, oversight and review, where here it is almost entirely purely at a prosecutor's discretion.
This falsely pushes conviction rates up, as there are huge swathes of cases where it has been demonstrated that people plead out as the path of least resistance, rather than factual guilt.
It seems like bodycams for guards is an appropriate direction to go. People in positions of power should not be able to abuse those in their charge with no repercussions.
I'd also like to see police and prison officer's unions eliminated. They frequently work to keep people in jobs when they really need to be removed from their position, and given the huge amount of power officers have over vulnerable people, that's very much not in our collective best interest.
>I'd also like to see police and prison officer's unions eliminated.
There is a particular balance that is needed here... This just shifts the abuse to the typical abuse non-unionized workers receive. Low pay, bad working conditions, dangerous working conditions which leads to more staff rotation and increasing danger in the work environment.
Can you speak more to what balance is needed? Not being able to terminate bad actors severely impacts the ability to improve the situation. The union rep seemed to shift blame throughout out the entire article.
From the article:
Bergami and Whitmore said they also tried to fire an officer who they saw on video throwing away prisoners’ mail, a possible felony. The agency also overruled them in that decision, they said. The bureau did not respond to allegations of staff destroying mail.“How do you root out the bad apples if you're not allowed to terminate those who have been recommended for termination?” Whitmore said.The two former Thomson officials and a current prison employee said the attitude among many guards was reflected by a group who refused to wear their issued uniforms. These officers opted instead for black T-shirts, many with the union logo or the skull logo of The Punisher — a vigilante comic book character popular with far-right groups. They called themselves “The Black Shirt Mafia.”
The general argument from the pro-unionists is that police are agents of the state and agents of the state aren’t normal workers in need of typical union protections.
I'm a pro-unionist, anti-police, and I don't really buy that argument.
All that you need is rule of law, rather than carving out special cases for police unions.
Unfortunately, while all animals are equal under the law, but some animals are more equal[1] then others...
[1] Still waiting for a cop in my town going 50 over the speed limit, with no lights or sirens running down a woman at a pedestrian crossing to be charged. We're almost coming up to a year anniversary on it!
I wouldn't recommend making a special case for _police_ unions.
Unions shouldn't be allow to have management and non-management in the same union. The guy evaluating your performance (police commissioner) should not be allowed to be in the same union regardless of if you are police or tech.
Why would the state not abuse its workers? In theory the 'union' portion of representation should be codified into the rules the departments are under, but they are not. Prisons will gladly have you work double shifts where they are allowed even though it's insanely dangerous.
Cops and prison guards aren't workers in the sense that labor unions are based on. They are part of the infrastructure that determines who works, where & how, under what conditions, and to whose benefit. I don't mean to dehumanize them but in the mechanism of labor relations their role is more related to coordination and coercion than it is to production.
Like if everyone's bosses organized, what they would have isn't a labor union but something else. Police unions use the nomenclature of labor unions but they are actually a different thing.
" prison guards aren't workers in the sense that labor unions are based on"
So, this shows that you have zero idea what the inside of prisons are like for it's employees.
A captain level at a jail would tell a corrections officer to go into a pit of angry inmates in a heartbeat, and in general the unions for these officers are what help push the rules to keep said officers from getting killed, or working double shifts.
A good thing and a bad thing can happen with a system operating normally.
You're getting twisted up thinking I'm making a value judgement about morality or whatever; it's not about goodness or badness.
If a group of business owners coordinates for the benefit of their shared interests, what they have is a business association or chamber of commerce or cartel not a labor union. This is despite the fact that their work individually could be grueling or dangerous, or they have an even worse boss or whatever.
Cops and prison guards, like business owners, are part of the system that coordinates who produces value, when and where. But they do not produce that value, and so their organizations aren't labor unions. It's not merely a semantic point either: they have working conditions sure but their goals and tools are different because of this relationship. From a guard's perspective the ideal prison has no prisoners in it; the second best has them drugged and restrained at all times. How would a union reconcile either of these things?
And you're right, I've only ever been in a prison as a prisoner. What's your experience being employed in one?
A very close family member had a 27 year career as a corrections officer until they retired.
But pretty much point you on here is stupid beyond belief. Do you think anyone at any job wants to do anything if the other option was getting paid for doing nothing?
The workers at low levels in these organizations are treated like shit, just like every business that has low paid, low skill jobs. Why in the living hell would you think that a corrections officer is "part of the system". I'd say, "Hey go get one of those jobs and you'll see", but it sounds like you're eliminated from the category.
Again and again you are refusing to see that it's not about how much the job sucks but about what the work produces. A prison produces no value is it rent-seeking at best.
Go read some theory man I'm not going to try to explain it again. I literally got a TBI in there but I'm starting to suspect that between the two of us I'm the one with less brain damage from associating with prisons.
> One of the officers Bergami said he tried to fire was named in two separate lawsuits alleging he slammed two prisoners’ faces into the concrete floor, knocking one unconscious, according to court records. Neither person suing had an attorney, and both cases were dismissed.
At the very least, video evidence would have helped in lawsuits.
>“the vast majority of our employees are hardworking, ethical, diligent corrections professionals, who act with integrity daily and want those engaging in misconduct to be held accountable.”
In the career of prison guard, the ideal would be 100% integrity.
I believe unions have their issues, but that in a "market" career, such as the trades or retail or service workers, the good outweighs the bad.
Unions for police and prison guards are 100% a mafia and they should not be tolerated. It needs to be much easier to fire cops.
While other public sectors can definitely have an impact on public safety, I don't believe there is the threat of violence or endangerment to the public that is so prevalent in policing.
Therefore I'm /less/ concerned about teachers, fire, post office, air traffic, etc. even though they have their issues.
There are many aspects of a union. Employees deserve a unified voice. What they don't deserve is to hold the system hostage with threats after they agree to work.
I dislike unions in general. I think they're a terrible compromise in response to a monopolized labor market. You should deal with the monopoly, not create your own monopoly of labor.
Anyways, in cases where the employer has an unnatural monopoly and you can't otherwise address it, unions make perfect sense. The employees otherwise have no secure mechanism to legitimately and successfully negotiate their contracts.
Your only other way out is to privatize the police force to a large extent and allow competition between different agencies for different city contracts. Then you would have true market forces benefiting the city and the labor.
Unions are a right, not a privilege, and if the police and prison guards are racist, a good union representing them would also be racist.
We need to stop catering to them, however, and we need to make it those jobs fit for someone other than racists of fascists to do. But you can't create and uphold a racist system, and put all the responsibility on the hands needed to carry out the goals of that system. These horrible police abuses and prison abuses are usually being carried out under the oversight of hundreds of Democratic (often black) mayors and governors who love a docile and quiet minority population, but not the blame for the violent pacification that it takes to create and preserve one.
> It needs to be much easier to fire cops.
Unions don't make the rules, politicians doing what their donors say do. Giving the police unions what they want is a choice. Other unions don't get what they want.
I can understand why a person might commit an act of abuse. Anger, fetish, frustration it all makes a sort of sense, but what I cannot comprehend is why leadership was actively preventing investigations and sanctions.
It makes no sense unless it is a criminal organization profiting off of the abuse.
Leadership are abusers too and none of them want any more scrutiny at their facility. The entire motivation for the prison system is sadistic and the people involved don’t care about the human beings locked inside.
It is an organization, by definition. It's a unit of government.
This organization has revenue (budgeted to it).
If they perform poorly, the budget might be lowered next year. More correctly, if they are perceived to perform poorly, their budget drops. But they were in control of the mechanisms by which their performance is perceived.
> These people need consequences.
If you put people (individually or as a group) into an unpleasant circumstance, and demand performance from them at odds with the unpleasantness of the circumstance, you run into a problem. You're no longer able to insist they experience consequences for failure. When you attempt that, if they're allowed to quit, they just quit. And I know you weren't suggesting we press them into slavery.
Consequences only work when they have no leverage.
I agree that many prisons need reform. Many times they are a cess pool of abuse and inhumane treatment, drug running, and criminal enterprise training, with many prisoners and staff participating. But as I'm reading this I ask myself why don't they just fire the guards. And then I thought well there is probably a union. And yes of course I then read there is. Puzzle solved. Unions many times over time create an unworkable unreformable bureaucracy that prevents reform. Particularly in governmental and semi-governmental organizations in which unions become political machines which control who gets elected as their counterparties on the next contract negotiations, successfully gaming the negotiations and guaranteeing their survival. See public schools - watch the movie Waiting for Superman https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/
The biggest challenge with improving systems such as corrections is sometimes "upper management" is "the public" (in the form of voters who will sack anyone who tries to spend public money to improve circumstances because the voters simply believe "fuck criminals").
Good article, but I wonder why the photo of Thomson Correctional Center appears to show it to be an Illinois Department of Corrections prison rather than a federal prison?
There's still a strong culture in the US that fetishizes punishment. A disturbingly high number of people want criminals to go to prison and get beaten and raped. They don't care how many innocent people get caught up in it as long it isn't them personally and so long as at least some people they feel "deserve it" are being tortured. I'd like to think that those attitudes will change and eventually we'll start improving things, but I don't see it happening any time soon.