How is this the first time I hear this stat? I feel like my angst toward the system has been misallocated for a very long time.

Private prison services like phone and email systems are still able to take advantage of prisoners, even in public prisons.

It's like quite a few "horrible injustices"; they get piggybacked onto a few smaller and real issues, and then taken as gospel.

Because this is a recent development happening in part because it was a major agenda item for Biden. But note that they didn't close the private prisons, they just switched them to be used for ICE/Immigration incarceration because it's harder for those in that incarceration class to exercise their rights. https://www.geogroup.com/LOCATIONS

This is provably false. The private prison population has increased by 14% since 2000. [1]

[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...

Harmful viewpoint. If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely.

That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons. I encourage everyone to go volunteer and talk to inmates.

Look at unicore. Total scam.

Far more than 8% of inmates live subhumanly because public prisons are awful too. Focusing on private prisons distracts us from how much of the problem is systemic and political—cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency, being "tough on crime" and pure historical momentum. It's not a "follow the money" problem, it's a "politicians and voters" problem.

> cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency

And you would instead promote.. what? 'Rehabilition'? These arguments always show an absurd amount of empathy for the criminal, and little-to-none for the victims and (statistically extremely likely) future victims.

There is a large number of people that simply cannot function in society. If they aren't violent, cool: I have no problem with anyone living how they like. If they are violent, then they need to be removed from potential victims.

While there is some proportion of people that simply cannot function in society, the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

That's a common retort, and it's complete nonsense.

> the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

This does not track. People like to point to Norway as a model for rehabilition and low incarceration rates, while completely ignoring the fact that their crime rate is one of the lowest on the planet.

So, yes, if your crime rate (and anti-sociality) is near zero, I would expect the incarceration rate to be much lower, as well.

I did not mention Norway, or low crime countries, because the same applies for literally every country in the world.

Out of large countries except USA the ones with the highest incarceration rate are Brazil, Turkey and Russia, which definitely do not have "crime rate (and anti-sociality) near zero" but have literally twice as few per capita incarcerated people than USA, and all the moderate-but-still-high-crime countries like Morocco or Mexico or Malaysia have three times smaller incarceration rates than USA.

Unless you can make a good argument why USA has a twice larger proportion of people that simply cannot function in society than the abovementioned countries, I'll repeat my assertion that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

> If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely.

There's no objective measures showing that private prisons are somehow more 'inhumane' than government-run facilities.

> That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons

It is, so there's no excuse to not have some actual data to go by, compared to anecdotal experiences.

> Look at unicore. Total scam.

UNICOR is ran by the BOP. It has nothing to do with private vs public prisons.

"only"? That 8% is enough to make very wealthy owners successfully lobby politicians.

Not to mention all the private services revolving around public prisons.

Private prisons had 3.9B in revenue, and private prison services had 2.9B in revenue in 2021 [1].

In contrast, this is:

- Half of what the Car Wash Illuminati makes [2]

- About the same as the Evil Door Handle Lobby [3]

- Only 80% of the Portable Fire Extinguisher Cartel [4]

- Only 4% of the Yoga Tourism Cabal [5]

This is just nonsense.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html

[2] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-car-w...

[3] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/door-han...

[4] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/portable...

[5] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/yoga-tou...