http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit... http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_... http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/18/prison-small-business-ent-m...

I do not support private corporations (or even public good -- yes, I think the chain gang days of old are similarly awful) making money off of prisoners. However, from the articles you linked, some data:

* 2 million (2,000,000) inmates in federal/state/local prisons.

* 100 private prisons, 62,000 inmates in them (6.2%)

* 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states (unsure how this relates to previous point, the article isn't very well written and doesn't connect these numbers)

* Forbes.com article says there are 6,000 prisoners in the US serving time while working for a private enterprise.

So on the one extreme, we're looking at 6% of the prison population being affected by this. At the other extreme, there are only 6k prisoners affected.

I believe there are a huge number of ethical and moral violations surrounding the prison side of the US criminal justice system. Private prisons are one of them, but hyperbole and extreme language do not serve any of the population.

(I have no idea what I think about private prisons. I do not automatically assume that systems controlled by corporations are worse than those controlled by government bureaucracies. Public or private, US prison sentences are far too long for most crimes.)

This may be small, but it's growing rapidly, and if it's 6.2% now, it's 15% by 2020, and so on.

Hell, so long as it's effective, we're saving money in the long run. Money spent curbing recidivism pays for itself, considering a prisoner costs tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Also, it's not like prisoners are competing for the best jobs. There are heavy restrictions on their employment (part of why a strong incentive is needed to make them employable) so they are unlikely to be competing for software development jobs anytime soon. They do things like clean roadsides and stamp license plates.

Inherently? No.

Work programs where the pay is a tenth or less that of even minimum wage, though, are easily abused.

I do not have the data/link, but I heard from trusted source that some of the companies that build and operate prisons require states to guarantee maximum occupancy before they build a new jail.

http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/criminal-how-lock...

Me neither. HN.

Here are some additional links:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occu..., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/private-prison-quot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0atL1HSwi8

The current US system is mindblowingly stupid. People who are treated like animals tend to act like it, especially if they're encouraged to.

I would have a hard time voting for a guilty plea except in the most exceptionally horrible cases, because I would find it exceptionally hard to justify making anyone suffer through the US prison system. That would include if it was a murder trial or similar.

Not only do I find the US prison system immoral for its treatment of inmates, I find it immoral for the violence it is indirectly responsible for inflicting on wider society by actively treating people in a way known to at best be ineffective, and at worst having a massively negative effect on re-offending rates.

Anyone worried about violent crime in the US should start by demanding reform of the prison system.

And I'm beginning to think: Maybe it is a success. What if it's a success by keeping police forces busy? What if it's a success by keeping private jails thriving. What if it’s a success keeping a legal establishment justified in its self-generated activity? Maybe it’s a success on different terms than the publicly stated ones."

The US justice system works great for the ones who are being paid to keep it running.

I'd alternatively say that "people tend to act defensively/aggressively when they are mistreated the way humans mistreat other animals so often"

A Norwegian guy in the US, convicted to 7 years in prison for driving the wrong way down a one way street (and not injuring anyone btw), asks to be executed because the prison he is in is so horrible since he doesn't receive enough pain medication (he broke his neck in prison). He spends most of the time in isolation.

2) He is not asking to be executed because the prison is horrible, but because they have taken away his pain meds -- which they did because he (allegedly) tried not swallowing them in order to sell them.

There's definitely more to this story, I wouldn't be so sure that he's completely innocent (regardless of how reasonable the sentence is).

The link posted by twoodfin says this:

"He has a history of aggressive behavior," said Navajo County Attorney Carlyon, whose investigators unearthed police reports relating to John in Alabama, Illinois and California.

Those incidents included threats, an alleged stalking of a young girl, an attempted suicide and a run-in with a Los Angeles bicyclist in which John was accused of running over the man's bicycle in a fit of anger. Not all the incidents resulted in charges, and none resulted in a conviction."

His mother, in the car with him at the time, indicates that they were driving the wrong way down the street on purpose: frustrated by the street closures from the ongoing festival, they got to within visual range of their destination (a garage where their belongings were) and opted to ignore the street signs to get there.

Photos of him post-arrest show visible injuries to his face. That wasn't the police: his driving menaced some young children (apparently near the food stand) so frightening their father that he ran after the car and decked the driver. It was at that point that the driver fled the scene.

Seven year is a crazy high sentence; much too long. But using a moving car to forcibly coerce people out of your way isn't a simple moving violation: it is, and should be, a felony.

http://archive.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/04/25/201204...

  * Humane housing
  * Counseling 
  * Family visits
  * Emphasis on self-reliance

Without the political clout that the Corrections Corp of America has, I bet it would be difficult to bid for contracts, but it's a more realistic way of making a change than political pressure.

Either you believe in the ability of every human to change their behaviour, and you give them a chance to... every time... or you don't.

This, I feel, is tied to the death penalty too. Societies that give no second chance do not seem to worry too much about killing people.

Norway has a smaller and more homogeneous population, making these programs easier to be managed and funded.

The US consists of 50 states, a substantial majority of which have fewer people than Norway. In other words there already is a convenient delineation to use for separate systems; and there already are state-level penal systems.

For the handful of states where the population is more than twice as big or so, there are easy regional separations you could make.

These kind of problems are easy to scale because they partition trivially if there are aspects of the system that does not benefit from scale.

Now you also make the argument it makes it easier to fund these programs in a smaller more homogeneous population. If you mean that getting political agreement to funding is easier, that may be a point. But then the problem is not emulating it, but lack of will to emulate it.

I mean, ok, as a political idea that can be powerful but I don’t see it having anything at all to do with the truth. It’s just absurd …

-- "It's so big!"

-- "What can we do, the states decide for themselves!"

It often seems like the same people are able to hold either view depending on the question.

If, say, Minnesota wanted to have a prison system like Norway's, what's stopping them?

You are correct that states in the United States differ from one another in how they set up their prison systems. (Two other facts, in relation to other comments in this thread, are 1) most prisoners in the United States are in state prisons rather than federal prisons, and 2) most prisoners in the United States are in prison for offenses other than drug offenses.) I live in Minnesota. Minnesota actually does emulate Norway more than it emulates many other states of the United States. It has a lower incarceration rate than most states, and it has a higher level of public spending per inmate than most states, with single-bunk cells being the aspiration (and, for a while, the reality) to a much greater degree than in most state prison systems.

I once had occasion to tour Minnesota's maximum-security prison at Oak Park Heights[1] as an interpreter for a human-rights lawyer from another country. The lawyer, who knew the prisons in his country very well, was amazed at how clean and spacious the Minnesota prison was. He asked, in complete seriousness, "Wouldn't some people commit crimes just be put in a place like this?" A guard answered, with an equal degree of seriousness, "I wouldn't want to be an inmate here." Being in prison is denial of freedom. That's enough to count as punishment for most freedom-loving people.

[1] http://www.doc.state.mn.us/pages/index.php/facilities/adult-...

I can imagine a homogeneous population resulting in a lower crime rate although I have no data to back that up. I think a low crime rate makes it possible to have higher quality programs like this.

Assuming equivalent distribution, the higher the amount of people, the higher the amount of extremely difficult cases.

Let's skim those very difficult cases off for the moment: why can't the US make better use of concepts like restorative justice and rehabilitation for the rest of the criminal justice population?

It's cheaper; it's more effective to reduce crime; it's better for the children involved; etc etc etc.

So divide the jurisdictions to where they're manageable. We already do this - each state runs their system independently, just as each EU member state does instead of having a single European prison system.

This argument of scale comes up time and time again in these type of discussions despite being totally invalid in most cases: In most instances that are up for discussion it is not necessary to build one single large system.

http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://ww...

I think that's a wonderful example of how to both treat prisoners respectfully and at the same time provide a benefit to society.

hmmm...Private rooms could be part of the problem. Isolation can create psychosis. Maybe 12 hours a day is good enough, but I think total isolation should be avoided whenever possible, or let prisoners choose whether or not to be isolated. Integrating prisoners saves money and makes then happier. But these are probably among worst offenders given that there are only 250.

While Halden is a maximum security prison, it's also highly focused on rehabilitation, so it's not necessarily where the worst offenders are (Breivik is at Ila for instance, which can hold 124 people).

Halden is actually a fairly big prison by norwegian standard I think, the capacity of the whole Norwegian prison system is a bit below 4000 (77 per 100000 citizens, the current incarceration rate is 72 per 100000 according to wikipedia).

Most people with roommates still want a private room to retreat to.

Here in Finland, the largest prison in the country can accomodate 299 inmates. I imagine Norway's situation is roughly similar.

[0] http://www.kriminalomsorgen.no/finn-fengsel.237849.no.html

I mean I had to share some rooms for some weeks with different people, it was one of the worst experience of my life: different behaviors, idea of "respecting personal spaces", idea of "maximum noise allowed", habits at night, hygiene, etc... It is really something stressful. In a prison, when you risk to end up with people you probably won't like at all, is far better to have a personal room to stay for the big part of the time.

https://www.kriminalvarden.se/fangelse-frivard-och-hakte/fan...

The goal of penal system should not be punishment, but rather prevention of crime. Punishment is only one aspect of crime prevention.

IMHO, imprisonment has two goals:

  1. deterrence, to prevent _another_ person to commit the same crime in the future
  2. get really dangerous people away from the general population (this would be rare)

    A Canadian ad executive, Paul Coffin, pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of defrauding the federal government of $1.5 million. For five years, he and his wife had lived the good life by double billing for his services and submitting bogus invoices for fictitious employees. During the investigation, he had been uncooperative and experienced many memory “lapses” about his criminal activities. 

    He received a conditional sentence (no jail time). The judge accepted the man’s suggestion that instead of prison he should deliver a series of lectures on ethics to university students. The proposed topics of these heartfelt lectures are: “Never compromise your integrity, no matter what the perceived benefit.” “The only person who can rob you of your reputation, credibility, and good name is yourself.”

The low re-offending rates speaks for themselves: Most people who commit a crime do not re-offend if they're treated properly. Most of them are ordinary people that made a mistake, not psychopaths.

That is, at the very best, an extremely simplified extreme opinion.

Victims have every right to hate their offenders and a just society should do everything they can to help the victims, including punishing the offender. I don't get why this is an extreme pov but apparently it is.

Yes, society should do everything it can to help the victims---to help the victims to heal. Society has no imperative to help the victims to hate.