California bans private prisons

Re:California bans private prisons by pavel_lishin on Thursday September 12, 2019 @03:52PM (#20955674)

Wouldn't the better solution to these priorities be shrinking down those definitions of crime, and not filling up the prisons we've got, rather than building bigger ones?

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Re:California bans private prisons by chroma on Thursday September 12, 2019 @04:38PM (#20956182)

Only 1 in 5 prisoners are there for nonviolent drug crimes. You can't reduce the prison population by more than that unless you want to repeal laws against fraud, burglary, rape, assault, or murder.

One alternative would be to reduce sentences for those crimes, but good luck getting the public to vote for any politician who would propose such a thing.

See https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html for some interesting stats on US prisons.

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Re:California bans private prisons by kazagistar on Thursday September 12, 2019 @07:36PM (#20957638)

Or improve policies that lead to lower rates of those crimes.

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