The US prison system is not designed to reform anyone. Its goal is purely punitive.

The financial incentives are set up to produce as many dangerous criminals as possible. Without repeat offenders, many private prisons would have to close.

The solution is simple: The US should actually ban slavery and should also ban private prisons.

It should replace private prisons with ones that are rewarded when their former prisoners become productive members of society.

There should also be a cap on the ratio of prison spending to education, mental health, and community service programs.

For what it's worth, In my understanding the prisons themselves aren't necessarily private. At the federal level, most are not, but everything is run by for-profit contracting firms.

Private prisons incarcerate 8% of the total US prison population. I strongly suspect if they were banned, little would change for the average inmate.

The rest of the inmates are in prisons that are state-owned and thus inherently nonprofit, and the guards & other staff are either state or federal workers. Contractors do things like provide commissary goods or run the inmate telephone system, but the guard in the tower at your local prison is a state employee.

Hey, so IMO private prisons are a distraction and tiny part of the problem. The prison industrial complex is more substantial (but still just a piece). It's not just the prisons, but the contractors and LEO/justice personnel involved in putting bodies into the system and making sure as many lives are ruined as possible.

Compared to countries which instead practise rehabilitation, rather than outright "lock em up!" policies - recidivism rate is lower (e.g. Norway).

Although there's also the factor of better social safety nets as well, which will play a large part.

This is ignoring the not-so-historical use of prisons as a way to disenfranchise ones political rivals be they black, communist, socialist, antiwar, or whatever.

Not sure what you’re getting at here. An uncharitable reading would be that you’re implying that Normway keeps political dissidents prisoner, but I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to claim something so absurd.

I think that the implication is that this has happened in the US, which seems true to me.

Ys. The use of the courts and prisons as tools to quell dissent and maintain power for a minority prohibits efforts to reform prisons. To effect meaningful prison reform we must address the use of courts as weapons to silence political rivals. We should also be taking a hard look at selective enforcement, and lack of law enforcement action against criminal acts perpetrated by wealthy people. Steps like drug decriminalization, free career training/college programs for everyone, and quality rehabilitation are necessary to these ends but do nothing to right the generational injustices afflicted on the families caught up in the prison system.