Back in 2009 I worried about
the privatization of prisons:
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. Why on Earth WOULDN'T they? So you have innocent people thrown in jail for money (or in the NYT case a juvenile center), and now we must question whether or not every judge's decision is based on if he/she is getting a kickback or not. How comforting.
Matt Yglesias brings it home just
how terrifying this business has become:
The rule that people who are caught driving without a license need to pay a fine is supposed to halt illegal driving, not be a source of revenue.
But some towns have started to farm the fines out to private firms, who promise the usual combination of efficiency gains and campaign contributions. This totally flips the script around to a situation where suddenly noncompliance is profitable, as it leads to escalating fines and human tragedy:
Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked. When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed— charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.
There you go. "Free enterprise."
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