Private Prisons

To me, there is something strange about a nation that sets up a collection of laws based on morals and values, and then is okay with paying private companies to house people that (allegedly) break said laws. Likewise I'm not in favor of hiring private, mercenary companies to do our fighting for us; I believe if a country wants to go to war yet can't rouse up enough people from it's population who morally support the cause to join the fighting it simply should not fight that war.

The main thing I got from this article is that housing criminals pays, so it behooves private prisons to keep their facilities stuffed as much as possible. Which means they're not particularly interested in whether or not an inmate is guilty or not, so right away you have a kind of flimsy, so what? kind of justice. And, even worse, having privately-run detention facilities opens the door to judges getting kickbacks from these centers, as was the case HERE. So you have innocent people thrown in jail for money (or in the NYT case a juvenile center), and now must question whether or not every judge's decisions are based on if he/she is getting a kickback or not. How comforting.

Also, what are the legal bounds of such ownership? If I own one of these detention centers, can I decide that from 2-4pm every day they're free to roam, say, the Capitol Mall? Why can't I, I own the joint - can't I open the doors when I want? Obviously that's way out there, but who really knows? Can China or Iran bid to buy these prisons?

There are practical reasons private detention centers are bad (innocent lives ruined, complete corruption of the bench) but as I opened this post, there's something wrong in my mind with deciding the rules of law and then handing over the reins of punishment to someone else for money. As in my parents told me what was right and wrong, and, as the only judges of my behavior, they did all my ass-whuppings themselves.