Why are there private prison companies to begin with?

There are, in my opinion, certain aspects of government, which never should be outsourced for private gain. A prison company being one of the most extreme examples.

Why exactly, though?

If other companies can satisfy the needs of the state, why not prisons? You wouldn't mandate that governments should build their own cars, for example?

Monopoly on violence [1] is held by the state as it should be, otherwise we have vigilante justice and I think we can all agree that's bad.

In my opinion (and we can certainly debate this point) this should never be outsourced to third party entities. A rent-a-cop in a mall should not have the power to arrest customers (or even search their belongings) without calling the cops.

Outsourcing such functions have the inherent risk that the privat company cuts costs and corners and moreover hires unqualified and cheap staff, which makes a bad situation even worse.

Incarceration of a human being should never, ever be a license to aply additional torture in any way, shape or form. Private law enforcment with minimal oversight is a direct route to such excesses, which should not be tolerated by a civilized society.

You wouldn't mandate that governments should build their own cars, for example?

That's a rather silly analogy, don't you think? Consumer products usually don't violently intrude into the freedom and bodily integrity of other people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

edit : added link

US has been glorifying violent vigilantes in popular media for at least 50 years. Vigilante superhero movies are one of the most selling every year.

The incentives are all wrong. For profit prisons "growth" model relies on growing the prisoner population. If they manage costs better and, more importantly, produce better outcomes, then we should look to shifting more of our prisoners there. To date, I haven't seen any such data.

The incentives should be "landing a government contract", though? So if government makes "landing a contract" dependent on rehabilitation rates, it could work?

As a non-American this boggles my mind too. Certain things are not meant for the private sector.

Even in free markets, Oligarchies and Monopolies are a thing. No system is perfect - potential lack of competition in niche areas is one of the weaknesses of a free market system.

Agreed.

But we choose a free market or whatever because we believe it will produce the best outcome. If it doesn't work as envisioned then we can either tweak it until it does work, or throw it out and start again, the worst option is to leave it alone, especially as we know it works elsewhere.

There seems to be a view that free market v socialism is a binary choice. Its a continuum, and both pure socialism and pure free market are equally bad. No country follows either path 100%.

The problem is private prisons openly lobby, and secretly collude, with the government to increase their profits.

This is also why insulin is expensive (the discoverers and patent holders made their patents freely available long ago). It's regulations which keep insulin, and other drugs, protected from competition and therefore can be expensive... Really, there are endless stories about this.

The gov vs private debate is kind of academic when the reality is a lot of the problem comes down to collusion and cheating from both of them.

It is fine if entities try to increase profits.

Usually competition is the way to insure fair prices.

The collusion then might be to not allow competition. In the case of pharmacy, for example, I would guess there are many regulations that make it very expensive or infeasible to start a competing firm.

The problem with private prisons is they have a conflict of interest. Do they work to improve the lives of the incarcerated and lower recidivism? No! That would lower their bottom line as they get paid per person.

That's a market failure. I'm not pro-privatization of prisons.

Arguably there is only one customer - the government. So maybe it is impossible in this case to create a free market.