1) People are afraid of crime but don't understand it. 2) Politicians get voted in on the basis of things people are afraid of but don't understand. 3) Everyone votes to be "tough on crime" without having to explain or understand the repercussions of what that means. 4) Sentences increase and prison populations swell and the people cry out about the expense. 5) Politicians demonstrate how cheaply they're solving the problem by putting the task out to the lowest bidder. 6) "the lowest bidder" is usually the guy who knows best how to make money via overruns and cost-plus contracts because the government is stupid. I had a contractor underbid an auditorium install I designed by 50% - they told me later they straight-up forgot the wire. They still made a hell of a profit, though, because their change orders inflated the budget by 300%. Yay open public bids. I would honestly say that the private prison system has nothing to do with the war on drugs. People don't want to incarcerate friends, loved ones and victims, they want to incarcerate "dangerous criminals." This is why crack was sold to America as crazy rocks that made Darky violent and why the Norman Rockwell portrait of the meth addict is some crazed guy with track marks who will knock your teeth out for a dollar. Remove the "violence" from the portrait of the American drug user and we don't put them in prison. However, the people who care the most about "justice" from an American standpoint tend to see "crime" as a synonym for "sin" and know that the way "sin" is dealt with is through "repentance" and "punishment."
I agree with all the above but this. I would be surprised if the private prison industry didn't give more money to candidates that pledged to get 'tougher on crime'. In that sense, I think they would help fund the propaganda behind the war on drugs, by rewarding candidates that seek to continue or expand it. Seeing as tougher illegal immigration legislation was penned by the private prison lobby, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do the same for drug-related laws. http://www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-hel...
And there it is...The word penitentiary comes from "a place to do penance". That is, sit there and pray for forgiveness. As intemperance is a sin, we must incarcerate those who are intemperant so that they might ask for forgiveness. Talk about separation of Church and State! I'm always curious why its the atheists, who statistically have among the lowest crime rates of any "religious" (for lack of a better word) demographic, who are demonized. The believers cause the crime, because they know they can be forgiven by a third party.
The incentives are perverse and the opportunity for corruption so blatant that it boggles the mind to even think that this is legal. Remember the case of the family court judge in Pennsylvania who was throwing kids in jail for months and years infractions like getting in a fight at school? That's what happens when prison is an industry.
Not only that, but if you've got a depressed area with a vanishing economy, the two quickest ways to get jobs in that community are a) build a casino b) build a prison. Look at it this way - prisons are one of the most functional ways to transfer funds from a federal budget to a state budget, or a state budget to a local budget, or a federal, state or local budget to a state, local or federal company. They are money vectors, pure and simple, and their medium is just like interstate trucking or hog farming. Hogs don't like hog farmers, either. That's the prison system in a nutshell - factory farming from a pig's eye view.
Its unfortunate that you are correct, because both jails and casinos are such terrible options. We have three large casino in Detroit (of course they were billed as a job creating measure), and they are nothing but money sinks. Each is filled with poor people mindlessly giving their money to the owners. But, there's no accounting for stupidity, I suppose.