First I would like to know how much each of the private systems or their CEO's have contributed to judicial races over the past years.
Just like some charter school systems, the public gets the most difficult cases and the private get the easy ones.
Also how much taxes did the private systems pay? How about the pay to CEO's.
I can not see why if there is a profit to be made why the public should not get it. Why should the states turn over a profitable business to private when they could use the profits from prisons to pay for other programs or reduce taxes. The profit made by private companies is a TAX on the general public. Why do I have to pay taxes so someone else can make a profit?

Prisons should NEVER be a for profit industry. That is profiting off of people's misfortune, and that just seems wrong to me.

I'll give you an example of what happens when you allow for profit prisons. In Colorado, where I live, 25 years ago we spent $70 million a year on the ENTIRE dept of Corrections. That was a pretty even number, accounting for inflation, etc. At the time of Reagan deciding that everything gov't was doing had to be up for profit, Colorado decided to privatize the prison system "to save the state money". 25 years later, we now spend $770 Million per year on the DOC. We spend as much on cannabis law ALONE as we used to spend on everything. During that same time, we have decimated school spending to where we are 49th in the country in education spending, and 3rd in prison related spending.

It's a fundamental law of reality. If you take a system that is being run by the state for no profit, spending about 3-5% on overhead, it's fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE to add on a 30-50% profit motive and save a freaking penny. I'm NOT an economist, in fact, I'm a professional musician, but even *I* can figure out the flaw in that reasoning.

Not only that, but once you have an industry in your state whose profits are based on how many people they lock up or have in their probation departments, it's no wonder that suddenly EVERYTHING is an excuse for jail time or probation. Things that other countries don't even see as important enough to write a ticket for are suddenly excuses to involve the law. Sentences got harsher, the whole "three strikes" BS, all of it is entirely passed so as to keep more and more people in jail, and therefore, a source of PROFIT.

The ENTIRE privatization policy is based on nothing more than making profit where none should be. It's all set up so that those with too much already can get more, and YOU get less and less and less. Private prisons are costing Colorado 11 TIMES what the state run ones did, THERE'S your savings. And your investments. And your children's college educations. And your retirement. All so that rich people can make a profit over what SHOULD be the job of the state.

It's just one MORE way in which we live in the LEAST efficient system in the world, and one that is specifically designed to part you from your money. Every time your costs go up, someone somewhere is making a larger deposit in their Swiss bank. And every time the gov't "privatizes" something else, you will be paying MORE for that, too.

Let's just call it what it really is, PIRATIZATION. It isn't REALLY supposed to make anything cheaper, it's supposed to make rich people even richer. And it's incredible how well it's been working, and now we all seem to think that this is how it's SUPPOSED to be. It's not normal, it's sick.

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The Government has a vested interest in trying to maintain the illusion that the Privatizing of prisons was about "tax savings".

This is NOT why they did this. They did this to shift tax money from the people to the Corporate State. It was a means of further enriching the already wealthy and nothing more.

The Right wing-nuts are always talking about the free market. Anything that does not make a profit is not capitalism and therefore is not part of the free market. However human beings are not commodities to be profited from in the free market. Schools, health care, and prisons are all institutions for the common good and have nothing to do with the free market and must be under the government budget, paid for by the taxpayers. Otherwise the very people who want private prisons, (or someone they love,) may end up falsely accused and sentenced to many years in a private prison. After all capitalism is making capital and if incarcerating people is profitable for the private prisons, who knows who will be arrested and framed, to drum up business? Be careful what you ask for , conservatives , you might get more than you bargain for. Arresting innocent people in America is bad enough now but privatize all the prisons and I am sure it will get worse.

The fools still don't get it. The privatizing of government functions is nothing but a giveaway of taxpayers money to for profit corporations whose sole legal purpose is to make as much money as possible for the company, not to provide services to the American people. But the American people keep biting the corporate shit log and are watching companies like Blackwater, Bechtel and Kellogg, Brown and Root just to name a few walk a way with your hard earned tax dollars.
Meanwhile our roads, bridges, schools and hospitals fall further and further into disrepair. The American people are idiots who continue to shovel their tax dollars into the pockets of the evil rich in our society. What a bunch of MORONS.

Our local private prison had a fairly large jailbreak. I suspect that because they're trying on paper to minimize jailbreaks, they don't care if one jailbreak is large or not.

The general problem with private prisons is work-to-profit regulations. More men in the electric zoo means more profit. Recidivism is a profit center. Lobbying the legislature or paying a judge off (in Pennsylvania) for harsher terms is a profit center. Cons who are afraid to leave the joint, or better yet functionally unskilled, is a profit center. Cherry-picking your cons is a profit center -- let the public prisons look awful with the dregs guys. Jailbreak prevention paperwork is a cost center so minimize it. If half a dozen cons break out easy as pie by running and climbing through an existing hole, just fire some disposable underling and you still get to keep the prison's profits.

The nation's top crime is possession of a plant. The US houses a quarter of the world's prisoners. Under Democrats Clinton and Gore the prison population about doubled. People shouldn't be put in cages for victimless 'crimes.'

There have been candidates opposed to this barbarism, but they are censored by the media.

Let's not forget, when we're spending a great deal of our time and money wasting resources chasing non-criminals, that leaves more real criminals, such as pedophiles, rapists and killers, at large.

johnny u of new hampshire says that u.s. senator lamar alexander of tennessee came to our state riding a wave toward the 1996 republican presidential nomination when our media exposed what he and his wife honey had been doing in tennessee. as governr there, alexander was publicly promoting prison privitization at the same time that honey held c.c.a. stock. corrections corporation was just starting out; it had just issued its initial public offering, with its stock price tripling in a few months. two or three times a week, then governor alexander would hold a press conference extolling the virtues of prison privitization, shilling the stock price while honey would every now and then sell a bundle of it as it rose. they made a quick fortune, but the sleepy press people in tennessee did not even report it. when the national media discovered the truth and publicized it, alexander's presidential chances quickly evaporated, and he soon retired from the race. alexander has never done anything but work for the government since he was 18 years old; born in 1940, he was a successful draft dodger, much more artful than dan quayle or george w. so, no one in new hampshire could figure out how alexander ended up being worth close to 30 million dollars. he's an embarassment to himself and his state now, as evidenced by his refusal to streamline the student loan program, where he objected to an extra 61 billion dollars in finacial aid to students. this extra money came from cutting the banks out as intermediaries and making the loans directly to the students.. he said it was socialism, when in fact it saved the government money. a true conservative would favor the savings; instead, alexander wanted to entrench the banks, which take no risks since it is the government alone that guarantees the student loans. alexander wanted to award a favored constituency a huge sum of money for doing nothing but simple administration and thereby shortchange students and taxpayers. i call upon his constituents in tennessee to demand his resignation. i myself call upon him to resign immediately.

FIRST THEY SAY...
"Privatizing Florida's prison system has done little to lower costs or reduce recidivism rates compared to prisons operated by the state, according to a report..."
THEN THEY SAY
"The report concludes that several steps need to be taken, including an analysis by an objective research organization, to determine whether a prison should be operated by a private or public organization."

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

"Privatizing Florida's prison system has done little" QUOTE FROM THE REPORT.

Why do we need an "analysis"... seems ya just did that.

It should be obvious to a moron that prison privitazation and any public benefits are mutually exclusive.

The objective of prisons is to rehabilitate the incarcerated whereas anything private has the goal of profits--the more prisoners, substandard conditions, the higher costs, the more profits.

It's all such sickening blather--degrading our institutions, all the while transferring public monies into private pockets.