The prison system should not be privately run.
Posted: 2009.02.12 (16:21)
For one, it leads to things like this.
For another, there are two possibilities for the owners of a prison: they are rational, or they are irrational.
If the owners are rational, they'll quickly realize that it makes a whole lot more sense economically to run the prison in a way that people who leave it repeat offend - this makes it more likely they'll be imprisoned again, resulting in more profit for the owner. Plus, there's simply no effective way of monitoring this: you can't monitor every single prison to make sure they're attempting to rehabilitate people, especially given that rehabilitation is a complex process.
If the owners are irrational, what business do they have running a prison in the first place?
There is of course the possibility that almost everyone who owns a prison is altruistic enough that they would try to rehabilitate criminals at the expense of their potential profit. Of course, if altruism were this common in soceity, we probably wouldn't have much crime in the first place - people are, as a rule, greedy and evil. In a similar vein, this.
For another, there are two possibilities for the owners of a prison: they are rational, or they are irrational.
If the owners are rational, they'll quickly realize that it makes a whole lot more sense economically to run the prison in a way that people who leave it repeat offend - this makes it more likely they'll be imprisoned again, resulting in more profit for the owner. Plus, there's simply no effective way of monitoring this: you can't monitor every single prison to make sure they're attempting to rehabilitate people, especially given that rehabilitation is a complex process.
If the owners are irrational, what business do they have running a prison in the first place?
There is of course the possibility that almost everyone who owns a prison is altruistic enough that they would try to rehabilitate criminals at the expense of their potential profit. Of course, if altruism were this common in soceity, we probably wouldn't have much crime in the first place - people are, as a rule, greedy and evil. In a similar vein, this.