News Article: Justice Department Says it Will End Use of Private Prisons

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...471534255226&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.af9a59641d60

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

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In general I'm against government having more control over things but in this case I have been against the prisons for profit thing for a long time now. There's little incentive to see non-violent criminals released, rehabilitated, etc. when making money is involved.

Now if we can just get some other big improvements to the justice system...

CajunCrimson said:

Yes because everything the government runs, runs so much better. Maybe they can get the Obamacare and VA people to run the prisons too

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I agree on most things as far as that goes and I'm sure there's huge waste & inefficiency in government run prisons but I still have a big problem with prison being something that should even be a for profit business in the first place.

America already incarcerates people at about twice the rate or more of other first world countries. Turning inmates into profit margins is one part of that problem but far from the only problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

The "kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were convicted of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit youth centers for the detention of juveniles, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of residents in the centers.

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CajunCrimson said:

is this the legalize drugs argument?

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No it's the serious problem in our justice system argument of which mandatory minimums and marijuana charges are one part.

The system is built around getting convictions and holding up convictions rather than finding the truth and giving justice. Which is why we're seeing record numbers of overturned cases and exonerations while not knowing how many innocent people are truly rotting in prison for crimes they didn't commit because they couldn't afford a decent attorney. And even when they can get a decent attorney and evidence comes to light that they were innocent it can still take years for an innocent person to get out of the system because many of the appeals courts just rubber stamp what came before them.

District attorneys, judges and sheriffs being elected helps add to this because it gives them extra incentive to push through convictions for their image so that they can keep their jobs when election time rolls around rather than search for the truth in cases which is what DA's are meant to do. Prosecution being able to spend money left and right to convict someone that is stuck with an underpaid public defender who may have a hundred other cases going at the same time adds to it as well.

Innocence project studies estimate that between 2% and 5% of all prisoners are innocent, which doesn't sound like much but tell that to the 40,000-100,000 or so people that are sitting behind bars for something they didn't do. Nevermind the cases where people that did a small non-violent crime are given ridiculous sentences because of a mandatory minimum.

The system is broken and corrupt like so many other things in our society. Private prisons might be a response to the mass incarceration like the link Bod posted above says but it also takes away the societal need to actually fix what it is wrong in our system because some corporation out there can just get a payday out of the broken system.