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Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons

Cardinal said:
I listened to an undercover report on one private prison and it was kind of harrowing.

Don't play this if you're trying to lighten the mood at a party:

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-man-inside-four-months-as-a-prison-guard/
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joG said:
What it means to say is that governments were incapable of structuring the contracts with private companies competently. If one does not structure the contract well, you should not be surprised at bad results.
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When the government pursues a bad idea, the privatization of prisons, you should not be surprised at bad results.
 
Cardinal said:
I'm reading that they are shutting down thirteen prisons. Surely there are more contract prisons than that?
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The DOJ is only in charge of federal prisons - DHS is in charge of immigration holding facilities. Most private prisons/jails are under state or local contracts.
 
I believe this only applies to the federal level. Privately-run prisons on the state level shouldn't be effected.

I find the report a little odd. Most privately-run prisons at the state level that I know of are cheaper, run smoothly, and have few incidents.
 
poweRob said:
uh... no. It means:

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,”​

Right smack dab there in that link you didn't bother to click.
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I actually did a short read through the internet looking for research after clicking the link. And like so often (the ones I looked at most closely a while back was private rail transport and health care), if the government does a bad job of structuring the property rights it gets bad results. That is just what you would expect from economic property rights literature and and should not surprise anyone. It is therefore wrong to use a regional study to argue that public production of private goods is better. In a general way it is always inefficient to produce that way and there must be very good reasons for a society to choose the waste of inefficiency. There must be very good reasons to do this other than ideology.

So, if you honestly want to produce private goods by government, find substantial reasons for this and show that the goals could not be attained by suitable property rights structures.
 
Casper said:
I agree, private businesses have no business being involved with incarcerating American Citizens.
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Why? I don't like it is a little iffy.

And it seems that the government has not been doing its job. It should have had better contracts in place and controlled them for desired results instead of demanding more public officials. Of course, that is what you would expect from a liberal bureaucrat or politician. But that is due to self-interest and, what you would expect.
 
upsideguy said:
When the government pursues a bad idea, the privatization of prisons, you should not be surprised at bad results.
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Then you should show that it is good in this case to waste economic resources on producing a private good publicly. You should show, what the cost benefit is and discuss how you want to finance the additional costs.
You should also, if it is true, that the government has been wasting money on an incompetent contract, name the persons responsible.

What is absurd, however, is to blurp out that the economic approach that should result in the highest general welfare is the wrong way and explain, why it is not doing so.
 
joG said:
Then you should show that it is good in this case to waste economic resources on producing a private good publicly. You should show, what the cost benefit is and discuss how you want to finance the additional costs.
You should also, if it is true, that the government has been wasting money on an incompetent contract, name the persons responsible.

What is absurd, however, is to blurp out that the economic approach that should result in the highest general welfare is the wrong way and explain, why it is not doing so.
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Pretty easy.... start with healthcare. The US has a private system with the highest per capita costs in the world and sketchy outcomes. Most to all 1st world systems (not just some) that are government systems are remarkably more cost effective.

ACA - Healthcare - Life_expectancy_vs_spending_OECD.jpg

Healthcare is an example of the private sector doing it far less effectively than public sector...

But, that actually is not the point. There are some functions that are government functions that should not be sold to the highest bidder. Often the profit motive conflicts with the public interest. For one, its not a good idea to allow a public servant, a judge, not the highest paid profession, to be a gate keeper for the success of a private business. Bad things can happen.... and do.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...end-use-private-prisons-4.html#post1066219853

National defense, police, criminal justice, code/regulation enforcement, tax collection, the public lands are some of the things best left in the public domain, for a variety of reasons, but the principal reason to reduce the chance for corruption.
 
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upsideguy said:
Pretty easy.... start with healthcare. The US has a private system with the highest per capita costs in the world and sketchy outcomes. Most to all 1st world systems (not just some) that are government systems are remarkably more cost effective.

View attachment 67206020

Healthcare is an example of the private sector doing it far less effectively than public sector...

But, that actually is not the point. There are some functions that are government functions that should not be sold to the highest bidder. Often the profit motive conflicts with the public interest. For one, its not a good idea to allow a public servant, a judge, not the highest paid profession, to be a gate keeper for the success of a private business. Bad things can happen.... and do.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...end-use-private-prisons-4.html#post1066219853

National defense, police, criminal justice, code/regulation enforcement, tax collection, the public lands are some of the things best left in the public domain, for a variety of reasons, but the principal reason to reduce the chance for corruption.
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We have been through this chart in DP a number of times and I am loth to explain the fallacy of using it the way you are and I will be only very brief. All the graph shows is the average spending on health care per person and the expected age at death.

1) The first is an aggregate of persons under Medicare and Medicaid and the costs of emergency care, where nobody else pays. This is only part of the market and is poorly managed, as far as I can see.
a) This sector uses a little more than half the total healthcare and has a higher spending per beneficiary than countries like Germany. This public spending is not private but public.
b) The second part of the equation is the spending of the private sector. It is this sector that has driven much of the R&D used by patients the world over.

2) Health spending is only one factor determining life expectancy. More important will tend to be health issues like obesity, prevalence of diabetes, which also influence the level of spending and deaths by non health causes etc. The US has more fat people than other OECD countries for instance and has for many years. Our peers are developing in the same direction but significantly later. In the 1970s obesity was higher in the US than it is in France now. Presently obesity is over tree times the rate of France. That it is more expensive to handle a population of fat people than of much leaner ones is obvious. Joints wear down faster and hearts need operations much earlier; arteries clog irreparably and people die. Add on the murders and auto accidents and all that stuff and you end up with statistics the layperson might interpret to mean we need socialism. Of course, that would keep us thinner.
 
joG said:
We have been through this chart in DP a number of times and I am loth to explain the fallacy of using it the way you are and I will be only very brief. All the graph shows is the average spending on health care per person and the expected age at death.

1) The first is an aggregate of persons under Medicare and Medicaid and the costs of emergency care, where nobody else pays. This is only part of the market and is poorly managed, as far as I can see.
a) This sector uses a little more than half the total healthcare and has a higher spending per beneficiary than countries like Germany. This public spending is not private but public.
b) The second part of the equation is the spending of the private sector. It is this sector that has driven much of the R&D used by patients the world over.

2) Health spending is only one factor determining life expectancy. More important will tend to be health issues like obesity, prevalence of diabetes, which also influence the level of spending and deaths by non health causes etc. The US has more fat people than other OECD countries for instance and has for many years. Our peers are developing in the same direction but significantly later. In the 1970s obesity was higher in the US than it is in France now. Presently obesity is over tree times the rate of France. That it is more expensive to handle a population of fat people than of much leaner ones is obvious. Joints wear down faster and hearts need operations much earlier; arteries clog irreparably and people die. Add on the murders and auto accidents and all that stuff and you end up with statistics the layperson might interpret to mean we need socialism. Of course, that would keep us thinner.
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On one hand, what you suggest has some merit... OTH, however, the preponderance of evidence is that the US private system is very inefficient versus government healthcare systems. I am not trying to argue this at nauseum, but I am happy to do so. The point being that governments CAN indeed do somethings better than persons doing it for profit, particularly as it relates to human services.
 
upsideguy said:
On one hand, what you suggest has some merit... OTH, however, the preponderance of evidence is that the US private system is very inefficient versus government healthcare systems. I am not trying to argue this at nauseum, but I am happy to do so. The point being that governments CAN indeed do somethings better than persons doing it for profit, particularly as it relates to human services.
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Economics is relatively clear that you are right to assume that government does and produces some things better than markets. The category of "things" this is true for is "public goods". Prisons do not seem to belong to that category.
 
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