At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by wallace_f on Friday March 22, 2019 @06:11AM (#19461019)

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.

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by europsucks on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:22AM (#19462747)

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.

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by f-securus on Friday March 22, 2019 @07:06AM (#19461340)

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.

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Re:At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more ... by wallace_f on Friday March 22, 2019 @07:10AM (#19461370)

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

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