private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons. The issue you implicitly refer to is prison contracts state "minimum payments when populations drop below [some] threshold". Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books.

The real issue is the concept of imprisonment ought be about putting people who truly can not be trusted to be "at large". Prison shouldn't be a punishment. There are other alternatives.

> private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons

possibly, but the issue is not cost conservation; the problem is that there are shareholders who benefit the more people are sent to prison. This creates perverse incentives (lobbying for stricter/longer sentencing, bribing officials, etc.).

> Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books.

Have you heard of the "Kids For Cash" scandal? Private prisons actively try to get more people incarcerated by bribing judges. The judges are complicit too, but the private prisons are absolutely trying to "funnel them into their pocket books"

Any evidence that this continues to happen?

Any system with any amount of scale will have bad actors. It’s one very bad data point, but certainly not enough evidence that the whole system is corrupt

Private prisons shift the burden onto the inmates and often have subpar services such as food and cell hygiene.

There’s a lot of hyperbole and incentives for the narrative to sound better than it is.

Unfortunately I have experience from a family member. See it for yourself if this is an issue you care about.

I know of at least one case where a judge was being paid by a private prison system to send people to them. I suspect that was not and is not the only case of that happening. Big money has a way of worming itself into other systems and manipulating them for its own benefit.

One case is the definition of 'not systemic'.

I would find it very unlikely if the one case I know about off the top of my head is the only case. Tip of the iceberg.

Private prisons only have lower costs if you exclude the eventual, and inevitable, intervention by the Justice dept to fix their inhumane conditions.