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[wierd]

You are looking at expensive prisons ALL WRONG.

Expensive prisons are GOOD for society.  It provides a real incentive to law enforcement to only long-term incarcerate people who truly, and genuinely need to be incarcerated.

The 18 year old kid with a nickel bag of weed?  Yeah-- Society cannot afford to incarcerate him as if he were a columbian drug lord flying a crop duster full of vacuum packed weed over the border, with a bullshit "Intent to distribute" charge.

He should not be in the prison system.

The reason he *IS* in the prison system is a perfect storm of crony politicians, making themselves look good by being "Tough on crime", and "making the streets safer!" (From a kid who bought a recreational size bag of weed-- because he COULD have been intending to roll it all up into reefers to sell to preschoolers! Think of the children!!!) coupled with a for-profit prison system that makes bank on fucking up his life.

[Maximum Spin]

Expensive prisons are GOOD for society.  It provides a real incentive to law enforcement to only long-term incarcerate people who truly, and genuinely need to be incarcerated.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

They're not paying for it, dude.

[wierd]

Expensive prisons are GOOD for society.  It provides a real incentive to law enforcement to only long-term incarcerate people who truly, and genuinely need to be incarcerated.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

They're not paying for it, dude.

The argument is "Non-private prisons are so expensive!!"

EG, "We would have to pay for it!!"

Pay attention.

I am saying that when they drop that line, the obvious and correct response is "GOOD!"

[Trekkin]

Expensive prisons are GOOD for society.  It provides a real incentive to law enforcement to only long-term incarcerate people who truly, and genuinely need to be incarcerated.

That way lies punitive taxation and subsidies and so forth, though, and those have a checkered history. Trying to enforce desired social states through economic pressures runs the risk of people finding economic optima that don't fit the spirit of your social goals.

[wierd]

That's what oversight committees and the like are for.

If there is indeed a genuine lack of proper funding for genuinely needed expansion in the prison system, such groups are able to produce hard data on it to prove the point. (Additionally, the rationale for having an expensive prison is not to simply have an expensive prison. The rationale is that the prison is expensive, because it is running PROPERLY, and PROPER OPERATION IS EXPENSIVE.  (Because giving psych counseling, medical care, proper hygiene and nutrition, mental stimulus of the incarcerated, et al, has a hefty price tag.)  A well run (and thus expensive!) prison is *GOOD*.  a prison that is simply expensive just to be expensive is not. Oversight groups (that are properly trained and motivated-- capture is all too real a problem) help with this aspect as well.)

That is a much better position than the one we are in now, where they tell half-truths about "sustainability", where they blithely omit that they mean "at current rates of incarceration and length of term", and pretend that the bulk of their inmates aren't petty drug users, instead of drug pushers.

[smjjames]

Pfft, the prison system doesn't need to be expanded. I know they need to expand due to overcrowding and such, but that overcrowding is a symptom of the problem (and sticking mentally ill into the prison system which isn't meant to handle that, doesn't help either). You have to deal with the cause of the overcrowding, otherwise the problem is still there.

[wierd]

I was referring to a hypothetical situation where we have transitioned away from for profit penal systems, and the streamlined court processes to stuff them with for politicians to preen and look tough on crime-- to one that operates on evidence based policies that properly care for inmate needs (which will of course be expensive) getting behind the times infrastructure wise in the face of a growing population (and thus a growing total number of individuals that need to be incarcerated, even if overall rate of such individuals remains unchanged.)

Sorry if that was not obvious--- It was kinda implied that it would be such a hypothetical if we take Trekkin's warning seriously. (That warning being that blindly accepting "expensive prison == good prison" as being equal to "Good prisons == expensive prisons" -- (as there is a very important difference that I lamplit)-- leads to situations where politicians and the like artificially increase the costs of prison systems to make them seem "better!!", and that has a bad history of happening. Such an outcome would only take place in a post-private-prison landscape.)

In such a setting, the mere passage of time (assuming we dont have a major world catastrophe of some kind that contracts population instead of growing it) means that the prison system will have genuine need to be expanded at some point--- at that point in time, such an oversight group would be able to provide hard data showing that this is so.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Frankly, I don't think any measure will survive in the face of the war on drugs. The rest is necessary, but it won't proceed as long as that critical point remains.

[deathpunch578]

You mean the behavioral sink thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink , only problem is that it's controversial whether it actually applies to humans and it doesn't sound like the rats that were the test subjects were subjected to prison-like conditions and routine since they were free to do as they wanted.

to be fair the rats could do what ever they wanted but there was nothing in the cages other than normal water and heroin water, but rats and humans have very similar mentalities (or something like that) and since no one will do a human test like that it's the best we have to go off of.

[EnigmaticHat]

Now I'll preface this by stating that our current prison system is wholly detestable, but I've also been told that our concept of prison without some form of monetization is unsustainable.

I have looked into this not at all, what do you more knowledgeable folks feel about that? Would a revamp of our prison system into rehabilitation centers put a large strain on us? How do you remove the profiteering and keep the funding at the same level?

The moral/ethical aspects (or lack of consideration thereof) seem clear. What are you guys' practical thoughts on the matter?

Prisons are never going to be profitable.  The point of a private prison is that investors build the prison for you, and in return they expect to be paid more per per-prisoner than a public prison would get in its budget.  And then they plan on cutting as many corners as possible and extracting every dime out of each prisoner.  There are only 2 reasons to use a private prison.  If you have an increase in incarceration rates and no budget to build more prisons.  Or if you want to treat prisoners like shit but don't have the guts to be honest about what you're doing.

Anyway, I'm all for prison reform and rehabilitation centered prisons, but our problems are simpler and more surface level.  We arrest more people than other countries and for much longer sentences.  We use solitary confinement, which is straight up torture.  Some prisons use their solitary cells as their protected custody wing.  And finally, some prisons use prisoners as a kind of slaves or indentured servants, which creates bad living conditions and some fucked up economic incentives.  Its mostly the private prisons that do this AFAIK.

There's also the very poor relationships that a lot of local police departments have with minority communities.  Combine that with the war on drugs and you get a situation where the cops are sending a lot of people into the legal system who probably did commit a crime but don't need to go to jail.  Or at least not for very long.

So basically: we need to stop putting so many people in prison, we need to stop committing human rights violations, we need to improve our police departments, and we need to end the war on drugs.  The only one that's seriously being worked on right now is the last one; pretty much everyone in the legal system agrees on that point except Jeff Sessions.

[smjjames]

You know, under the way the war on drugs worked, it would be ironic if they started locking up those addicted to opioids since its specifically a war on drug abuse.

[wierd]

.... In many instances, THEY DO.

[ChairmanPoo]

"semate"

[Dunamisdeos]

"semate"

I AM the SEMATE.

~Palpatone

[smjjames]

LOL! That typo got missed for so long.....

Edit: fixed now.