Agree 100%. A small step in the right direction. Our criminal justice system needs serious overhauls on SO many levels. Unfortunately, it is not only the fault of law enforcement, politicians, and judges. They are simply representing the will of the people. The heart of American citizens need to change. We live in such an unforgiving society. Despite what anyone says, America and Americans don't believe in 2nd chances. Anyone that survives our legal system and incarceration will NEVER have a true 2nd chance because we as Americans cannot and will not collectively forgive. I blame the media to be honest for perpetuating fear in the hearts of the masses. We live in a sad country filled with sad, fearful, unforgiving people. Maybe a blanket statement, but one that I believe to be true.
Despite what anyone says, America and Americans don't believe in 2nd chances.
I have seen first-hand that America and Americans can believe in 2nd chances, particularly if the perpetrator is white and comes from a middle/upper-middle class background. Police and the DA are willing to soft-pedal the charges. The prosecutor is willing to plea-bargain away and otherwise chip away at the penalty. (Even giving away 1/2 year of probation, beyond the wishes of the victim.) I've seen first-hand that 2 counts of felony assault can be whittled down to 1 year of probation -- provided the assailant is white and can afford good lawyers. White lives and white dignity matter the most in the US -- even in California and the Bay Area. Perhaps especially so.
I'm not American, so I don't really know what it's like there, but is it a race issue, or a class issue?
Would a well known/well off black person who can hire good lawyers be able to whittle down 2 counts of felony assault to a year of probation?
Here in New Zealand, the son of the Maori King (a purely ceremonial and symbolic role for our native people), who was something like 3rd in line for the throne, got off a theft and drink driving conviction because he would be ineligible to hold the throne if convicted. He was eventually convicted after public outcry.
One is the disproportionate attention minority races get from the police. It's not hard evidence but here's a CNN report discussing the profiling that wealthy blacks receive in the United States.
The second is the disproportionate sentencing for similar or identical crimes. Again without any hard data this seems to be mostly a class based issue. One commonly cited example of this is the differences in mandatory minimum sentences between crack cocaine and regular cocaine. Crack cocaine is often associated with lower classes due to being cheaper to acquire than powdered cocaine. Additionally there are significant differences between the legal representation that can be afforded at different levels of income.
Coupled with issue 1 this creates a disparity in how the US justice system treats minorities.
The typical ingestion method between crack and powder cocaine are drastically different. The way the body absorbs both drugs is different and the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different.
Just because things are chemically similar doesn't mean they are the same, nor should they bet treated the same.
But I do agree that on the whole white people get cut breaks where minorities would not. I just don't think the crack/coke example is a very strong one.
>the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different.
Would you like to expand on those? I don't see why crack would be any worse than normal coke. In fact, considering the effects are significantly shorter it seems much more suitable for a productive lifestyle.
Crack has a much more intense, shorter high, and is much more closely associated with negative life outcomes than powder cocaine. Powder cocaine users tend to be much more high functioning than crack users.
Many of the laws tough on crack cocaine were brought in during the 80s and 90s when crack was thought (perhaps accurately) to be tearing African American communities apart, and many of the campaigners for the tough laws were African American community leaders.
It's the unfortunate historical circumstance of race having become a fairly reliable marker for class. This is in turn a holdover from race having become a fairly reliable marker of slave status. I've come to think of many of the stickiest problems of the 21st century as holdovers from a past world that had the morality of Game of Thrones.
Americans confuse a former iconography (civil rights era) with existing circumstances. Today they have a class divide, not a racial one. That many POCs are in one class and not another is misdirecting idealism. The plight of urban blacks is so well documented that it is a television trope, but the poverty that exists in the countryside and even entire cities stagnating and evidence of decay is more or less ignored e.g. Note how the Tiny House movement is an attempt for 'middle class' poor mostly to differentiate themselves from 'those people' living in trailer parks (who in turn would be appalled if they were conflated with those living in section 9). Presiding over it all is of course the spread of the gated communities. This is all an emergent class structure similar to the one that developed in Europe centuries ago.
In my country, any time we hear of Southerners, the implication is immediately that they are red necks, racists, ignorant jesus freaks.
We don't get that from our television or radio. We get it from your movies, television and radio.
Many europeans don't realize they are inadvertently being drawn into (one side of) a culture war on a different Continent e.g. see BLM protests in London.
"iconography"? Dr. MLK, Jr. literally died 48 years ago. There are people who marched with him still alive today. I don't really get this fantasy that what MLK was protesting just magically went away in less than five decades. We've had wars last longer than that.
People who say "It's a class issue" seem to miss that it's much easier to recognize race than class.
>For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks.
People who read the stats showing the differences in sentencing between black males and white males, even when controlled for income, would hardly say "It's a class issue."
I didn't claim racism does not exist. I'm aware of the things you mentioned.
I am saying it mostly does not matter. I'm also aware this is not a popular view, but put that down to conditioning by the media. Their specialty is to draw attention to some things and not others depending on their bias after all. If the media people don't know, then you won't know, they only see the visible things and the death of investigative journalism and lack of serious big-picture reporting not in service to a paymaster has given them tunnel vision.
Suppose you 'solved' racism.
You would still have all the problems you have today. None of the education, poverty issues are going away just because of a lack of discrimination. Economics is tied up with class in a way it is not with race. The good news is that solving economic problems can solve for social issues like class conflict. Many migrants to America were from the bottom classes of Europe and they did very well for themselves when out from under the thumb of the old system.
Europeans have been dealing with class issues for centuries and we know what they look like. You don't have our history, yet, but you're going to. Social mobility in Europe is higher in Europe than in the US now, although perceptions have that in reverse.
If you believe otherwise then you believe that the US is following a different trajectory than nations before it, and I see no evidence for that belief.
I don't think the conclusion that it's solely, or even mostly, class based is correct.
Up until the 1965 there was open discrimination towards minorities enshrined in law. That's a mere 51 years ago from today - well within the lifespan of Americans living now. The United States also has a well-documented history of active disenfranchisement of different races.
Just about every crime statistic you'll come across also shows higher incarceration rates for minorities however the number of impoverished Americans of caucasian ancestry dwarfs any other minority group.
My own personal experience growing up in the American Midwest is that racism is alive and well in those areas. I vividly remember open and profane discussions about blacks amongst the local population being spouted by both adolescents and adults. This included the gratuitous use of what is colloquially referred to as the N-word (in the offensive fashion).
I believe you. It is just that there exist black communities outside of the US, both in majority white countries and in Africa, which have managed to improve their circumstances radically (sometimes from a very low point, but that definitely counts). The experience of stagnation is acute in American society despite overall higher levels of wealth. If one supposes the lower branches of the social mobility tree have been lopped off then it makes sense.
None of this is to say racism does not exist. I've heard plenty of talk about niggers and kikes before also. Plenty of racism in black and white communities is extant. I believe affirmative action is an example of, and an encouragement to, racism.
It is that class dwarfs all other issues in relation to inequality.
If you have the wrong accent, ghetto or southern, you aren't going anywhere in society. Getting elocution lessons and changing your name are tactics that would further your status in American society.
To put it in this way: perhaps at most hundreds of thousands to low millions are badly discriminated against on racial bias but anywhere from ten to hundred million people are affected by classism. Scale matters!
Look at how Hulk Hogan needed the backing of a billionaire, to get his lawsuit funded against Gawker. This is evidence of wealth discrimination (a big proxy for class), and we're talking about the justice system discriminating against a millionaire here! From here it can only get worse the poorer or lower your status is.
People said the same thing 100 years ago. "Black folks are free, what's their excuse now?" Looking back, it's pretty obvious. 50 years ago, Jim Crow was officially over, yet many extremely racist policies persisted. To this day, we have racist policies, even if not as brutally as in the past.
I completely agree. And considering forgiveness is such a core tenant of Christianity, it's surprising that people call the U.S. a Christian nation. Our use of capital punishment is also bizarre when you factor in the religious component. Or the utter lack of care for the poor.
And I'm not saying religion should influence our laws, but I find the hypocrisy astounding when the far right in this country is hell-bent on pushing their religious beliefs into our laws and government policies (abortion, birth control, marriage, etc).
> I find the hypocrisy astounding when the far right in this country is hell-bent on pushing their religious beliefs into our laws and government policies (abortion, birth control, marriage, etc).
While I have met many Christians in America that do live by their beliefs, I have found the majority of these self-professed "Christians" I have met are simply using the term as a tribal banner in which to wage a cultural war that enriches them and continues their evolutionary propagation at the expense of those that are not of the typical WASP voting bloc. The Christian doctrine of acceptance and tolerance appears long lost, and this same bigoted crowd often seems to be those that wonder why it is many people have turned to secularism.
Those wishing extreme "punishment" on those we incarcerate -- and are supposed to rehabilitate -- are wishing to play the role of the God of the Old Testament, not follow the teachings of their messiah.
Maybe, but Martin Luther King Jr. was a reverend, and I have friends who attend GLBT or African American Churches that I'd never call part of the religious right. And even within the right, there are lots of different types of people.
I am not super informed about Christianity in America, but it strikes me as a topic more complex and nuanced then your words might suggest you believe, and as a group more varied then you seem to have experienced.
I am Christian that does not claim the US is a Christian nation for precisely the reason you describe - forgiveness simply isn't an American value. We value punishment, stigmatization, and maintaining their permanence via information technology.
We only forgive when it's convenient or necessary - thus Apple's hypocrisy in hiring an abusive misogynist like Dr. Dre, with Tim Cook issuing a statement that more honestly should have read "This is a multi billion dollar deal, damnit! It needs to happen so you WILL forgive him!"
> the far right in this country is hell-bent on pushing their religious beliefs into our laws and government policies (abortion, birth control, marriage, etc).
To be fair I know many conservatives who are atheists who still have issues with abortion and one of them even with birth control. True it's typically a religious set of ideas that guide those groups but I would hesitate to say it's all of them.
In the United States, compared to all countries I know of, there is huge aggregate care for the poor on the private individual, NFP organization, state and federal level.
The baseline quality of life, again relatively speaking, is enormous even if your income is below the federal poverty line. The environment is great, services “just work", and people are generally pretty friendly.
I think its ok to focus on the shortcomings because you can then improve them. But relatively speaking, I couldnt think of a better place to be poor.
> And considering forgiveness is such a core tenant of Christianity,
In civilization, individual members give up the right for revenge to the state, who punishes perpetrators. Individuals may forgive a perpetrator, but that doesn't mean he/she should not be punished by the state.
Compare this with societies with practices such as qisas or blood money: if an individual (or family) forgives a perpetrator, they are not punished.
Having the government punishing people and the main religion stopping revenge cycles is a really good system!
Furthermore, the USA is lenient in sentencing and family are forging towards convicts. Compare this to Asian countries (such as Japan). In Japan, parents will break off all ties to their children if they are sentenced for a crime -- even a fairly minor one.
Try to do some petty vandalism or other anti-social behaviour in Japan, Korea or Singapore and compare the result with the result in the US.
That's reads more like spies doing spy stuff with other spies. The guy was going to get out of it anyway, but blood money was the most politically sensitive way for the US and Pakistan to deal with the issue.
According to René Girard, the defining characteristic of Christianity is the end of sacrificial violence against scapegoats.
So yes, it would make sense for a truly Christian nation to show far greater compassion than do Christian conservatives, who would have us believe that the United States was founded on Christian principles.
Money from where? Look at the graph of U.S. incarceration rate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/U..... The inflection point is around 1975-1980--a response to a spike in crime that started in the 1960s. The first private prison operator (CCA) wasn't even founded until 1983 and even in the 1990's, it was losing money.
The whole "private prisons cause incarceration" shtick is the same as "umbrella sales cause rain." No, rain came first, umbrella companies came after as a way to profit from rain.
Crime and punishment is a for profit business. If you don't believe that... well then I don't know what to tell you. The War on Drugs, DRAMATICALLY increased the prison populations in the United States. States that saw an explosion in their prison populations and that we strapped for cash / didn't care to deal with the incarcerated (particularly southern states) turned to private industry to house their incarcerated populations.
> Money from where?
What money? Taxpayer money. And once private business get's a taste of blood, and politicians in the US get that first taste of kickback money, we all know where it goes from there.
If WE as a society decide that WE want to sent people to prison, WE should have to deal with the consequences of it. WE should be responsible for the incarcerated. WE should be who those prisoners are reporting to. After all, WE should have reform as the end goal. We should't have some black box prison company as the intermediary who's best interest it is to hush, abuse and prevent reform of prisoners in order to keep them coming and their pockets fat.
Your theory of causation (kickbacks from private prison companies cause harsher laws and more incarceration), though popular, doesn't explain the data. If you look at the ordering of events, what makes more sense is actually the opposite causation. Crime started going up in the 1960s due to depopulation of the cities and exporting jobs. Drugs got blamed as the bogeyman, which got the drug war started in the 1970s and 1980s. Fed up with skyrocketing crime, people voted for tough on crime laws (by huge margins and often in public referendums rather than legislation) in the 1970 through 1990s. And the last step in the chain, in the 1990s and 2000s, was private companies springing up to take advantage of the massive growth in need for prisons.
One need not posit a theory of causation here to have a legitimate concern about the role of private industry in influencing the criminal justice complex.
In fact, one could take all of rayiner's assertions at face value and still share GP's concerns.
There are many many examples where private, for profit industry may not have nefariously instigated some governmental program, but surely fights to expand and continue it.
For example, we need not think that WWII was entered at the behest of a nascent aero-defense industry in order to boost revenue, but look what happened. (and ask that lefty Dwight Eisenhower, who coined the very term "military-industrial complex" in a warning speech to the republic as he left office)
Similarly, the utter buffoonery of our health care "insurance" industry is directly a consequence of some mid-century tax code finagling which made health "insurance" a deductible pretax employee benefit. Did those who would someday run the "blues" collude to create that system in some plot? No, but once it was well entrenched, the lock-in started with big money and big influence.
Did a bunch of far sighted conspirators get together to create the mortgage GSEs so that decades hence they could dole out lucrative sinecures? No, but once in place... etc.
The debunking of loosely reasoned talking points is, of course, the brand promise of a rayiner comment, but in this case he goes too far. There most certainly are self-perpetuating loops in government-business symbiote combinations and to deny them is willful blindness.
You're taking to events, that are 15 years apart, and tying them together. But I've given you another event that's closer on the timeline, and you deny it's connection.
The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act was passed in 1970. Nixon pushed drugs as "Public Enemy #1" in 1971. The DEA was founded in 1973. All of these things were done/created to chase drugs. To imprison people who were associated/profited from drugs. All of these things coincide with the prison population inflection point.
The recent revelation that the Nixon administration focused on associating subversives (black people and young educated white kids) with negative "illegal" actions (black people with drugs and young white kids with communist/socialist) only underscored my argument. Especially if you take into account things like the CIA association with the Contras. The government had/has a hand in making certain segments of society illegal and imprisoning them.
I agree, the public supported a tough on crime approach. They supported it with Nixon, Bush Sr. and even with Clinton. But the government told/tells people what crime is. And it is fact that a lot more "crime" came to our attention at the start of the drug war. A drug war that happened to take place in "problem"/"subversive" communities. A drug war that happened to take place when an agency in our own government, which was tasked with stoping subversion, had it's hand in moving drugs into those same communities.
Move the drugs, lets the drugs proliferate, let the increased police presence from the drug war quell subversion.
The fallout was the prison industrial complex and the private prison industry.
I'm not saying that the private prison problem came first, but at this point they damn sure have enough power and money to make sure that they're not going away any time soon.
Does it need to be the main cause (or even a cause at all) of the initial jump in incarceration rates for private prisons and their lobbying (and incentives in general) to be objectionable? There's a group of relatively influential people and businesses who have a direct economic incentive to prevent the rehabilitation of prisoners and to lobby for harsher penalties across the board. At a systems level, I'd argue that needs fixing.
I didn't say that private prisons aren't a problem worth fixing. But every time private prisons get trotted out as the explanation for the problems with the justice system, it's yet another lost opportunity to understand the real problems.
CCA isn't the problem. They're just opportunists. Part of the real problem is all the parents and teachers shrieking "just say no!" all through the 1980s and 1990s who voted dutifully for three strikes laws, "probation reform," etc. The other part of the problem is Americans: we're the most violent people in the developed world, with crime rates that are, even after decades of decline, several times higher than in Europe.
Just want to comment that according to the documentary about the Kids for Cash scandal the media made it seem worse then it was.
Their side of the story was that Pennsylvanian's children correction facilities were crap and he did not feel comfortable sending kids there. He organized a group of investors to pay for a new facility. The real estate developer who got the contract to build it paid the judge a "finders fee" for the referral. The Judges didn't report the money. As far as the harsh sentences the judge was doing that for years as an over reaction to the Columbine thing. It's an interesting doc suggest checking it out.
I think you stopped watching half way through. If you'd watch the rest of the documentary, they provide some details on how that "finders fee" was paid, it was paid out in contracts to one of the judges side businesses and then distributed to other companies to finally end up in the pockets of the judges. Does that sound like a honest "finders fee" to you? I don't care how the judges in question formulated it, the method by which the money was laundered clearly shows the maliciousness of their intent. They even admit it by stating they laundered the money both to avoid taxation and because they "knew it would look bad".
> The whole "private prisons cause incarceration" shtick is the same as "umbrella sales cause rain." No, rain came first, umbrella companies came after as a way to profit from rain.
You're right and wrong at the same time :)
The first time someone goes to prison is certainly not the private prison's fault (at least not directly; if they have family constantly in prison that can certainly harm and even guide someone to crime). The problem comes with repeat incarcerations. The private prison is incentivized to have people released with little to no help / guidance and the path of least resistance is returning to crime.
Yes private prisons are not 100% to blame for someone returning to crime. But we have shown through many rehabilitation problems that a large majority of prisoners can return and become productive. But when you're optimizing for the most amount of money you can get (which is currently head count for private prisons) you have zero incentive to pay for programs to help rehabilitate prisoners.
> Is there evidence that rehabilitation is worse in private prisons?
I could have sworn there was but I'm having a hard time finding a reliable source (just plenty of blogs and anecdotes) so I could be wrong. At least it makes sense to me, logically, but I have no idea if that's the real case.
A number of politicians have advocated that, particularly when it comes to non-violent drug offenses. Clinton, for example, is running on that platform:
Though I should say that I'm not sure shorter sentences across the board are what's needed. We definitely need shorter sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and shorter sentences for inmates who seem like they can be rehabilitated is a good idea.
On the other hand, I infrequently read about cases in the news where some deeply disturbed individual commits a truly heinous crime, and then is back out in the general population after only 2 or 3 years. There are some people who really should be in for a longer time.
I often look at sentencing through the lens of "how would I feel if this person lived in my neighborhood." Someone like Mumia Abu-Jamal is in for life, but I wouldn't be particularly bothered if he lived next door to me (or Bernie Madoff, sentenced to 150 years). Then there are people who only get a few years, but I wouldn't want them living anywhere near me.
I find her stance on prisons hard to believe considering her comments[0] as first lady. You might believe she changed but it shows a massive error in judgement at very least.
You're commenting in a thread that's advocating for the need to give people second chances, but you have a problem with a politician because they said something 22 years ago that you disagree with.
If you hold everyone to that standard you'll never be able to trust anything anyone says.
>If you hold everyone to that standard you'll never be able to trust anything anyone says.
Can you link to the Bernie Sanders super predator video? Do you know why you can't find it? Integrity. Is that really an unreasonable requirement in this day and age?
True, and some people should probably be removed from society in general. Give them a pleasant life, but understand that they are too dangerous to allow back into society. We expect common citizens to be willing to sacrifice their lives in defense of our society. I don't think asking someone who was trying to murder random strangers (for example) to sacrifice their freedom is asking too much.
Agreed. @Unbeliever69 Don't flatter Americans with this being our "will". It's a select group of people deciding on policies and their oversights are ultimately permitted by the public's indifference towards the political process.
I believe Unbeliever69 is referring the difficulties involved in finding jobs or housing once you have a criminal record. That isn't just 'policies', that is the result of the individual actions people take. There certainly are exceptions, but those exceptions tent to prove the rule.
> We live in a sad country filled with sad, fearful, unforgiving people. Maybe a blanket statement, but one that I believe to be true.
I have personally found American people to be very cheerful and forgiving too. Land of second opportunities! But people are super insecure. They are not willing to stand up for the rights of criminals no matter what the crime is. It makes politician's life far more easier.
Actually they're also under the will of decades of law enforcement philosophy based on old opinions and facts. Example is when federal and state chiefs argue for keeping marijuana a Schedule 1 substance against modern scientific studies, though it could be argued they just don't want to lose jobs or spending.
I wouldn't mind if your given a choice of 40 lashes vs. prison time. I would definitely take a temporary few days of pain over years or weeks of my life wasted in the psychological torture known as prison.
If you can't see that comparing welts on your butt for a week vs. lopping off a hand is hyperbolic, then I doubt that you're coming into this in good faith.
Harsh punishments do work, when you apply them consistently and early on. While you may think that being caned is harsh, most people I've talked to would prefer to be caned over a month in prison.
Singapore's use of the death penalty is a fairly good example. Kidnapping is a capitol offense -- consequently you see young kids walking around the Singapore alone and taking buses on their own.
Forgive me, for wanting to see an actual study instead of taking an internet commenter's assertion over the efficacy of "harsh punishments." Especially since "welts on your butt" is a gross mischaracterization[-1][-2]
The consensus among criminologists is that capital punishment isn't a deterrent.[0] That's why capital punishment advocates rely on emotional arguments around punitive and revenge. And a counter anecdote, you can see children playing and navigating cities alone in The Netherlands and across Europe, and none of those countries have capital punishment.
Furthermore, crime is actually at historic lows.[1] In fact, it's categorically safer now, than it was when you were a kid, or when your parents were kids. Thirdly, kidnappings occur primarily by estranged parents, and is also lower now than ever.[2] Pedobear in the van with "FREE KANDEE!" scrawled on the side in crayon is exceptionally rare. If your kid wants to ride the bus alone, you totally should let them. It's a fun, safe, adventure. In fact, kids do it the United States every day.[3]
While I agree with the downvoting of this comment for the primitive perspective, I do also agree with the sentiment. Prison time does very little to change people and makes them more likely to re-offend.
What matters is repaying the "debt" to society. Hard to do when a year in prison can cost more to the taxpayer than a year at Harvard.
You don't have to forgive anyone. Getting the retribution you think is just and deserved means giving the state the power to inflict that retribution on anyone it wants. There are consequences to having the brutish government punish people on your behalf and they always come back to harm the weak and innocent.
Justice systems don't operate to make people feel better or make the evil suffer.
> Getting the retribution you think is just and deserved means giving the state the power to inflict that retribution on anyone it wants.
Not giving that authority to the State means that it is retained by the People. The whole point of a justice system is to give the State a monopoly on violence: in return for giving up their right to vendetta, the People expect that the State will be scrupulous and fair in its prosecution of criminals.
Indeed, this is the foundation of the legitimacy of the State, and it is why a State which refuses to execute justice will eventually lose legitimacy in the eyes of its People.
I'd prefer the criminal justice system focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. I'd rather we try to make society safer than exact revenge: we all have different ideas of revenge, but a safer society ought to be pretty easy to agree on.
You don't really know what forgiveness is, but I'll help you , it's self-sacrifice, you can't hope to forgive someone if you're just waiting for them to make you feel better, because they can't replace what you lost.
Another good step would be to legally bar organizations that directly benefit from jails/prisons from lobbying for any law that is likely to result in more prisoners or higher sentences. These would include correctional officer/law enforcement unions, bail bond companies, criminal defense attorneys, and any company that derives most of its revenue from selling goods or services to jails/prisons, inmates, or criminal defendants.
Lobbying used to be flat-out illegal in the USA, but, over the past century or so, the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed it as protected speech under the First Amendment, and therefore something that basically can't be restricted in any meaningful way.
So I don't think it - or a number of other socially corrosive aspects of the American political system - is likely to change without an amendment that would be extremely difficult to pass.
The trouble with lobbying is - where do you draw the line?
Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to petition my elected representatives?
Do I, an individual citizen, have a right to organize with fellow citizens to petition my elected representatives?
Do I, an individual citizen, who owns a business, have a right to organize with fellow citizens who own similar businesses to petition my representatives?
The problem with lobbying is a fundamental issue with representative democracy, not with the American political system. Lobbying by monied interests is simply more overt in the American system. I can't think of a Western democracy where industry interests don't have a huge say in the legislative and even executive processes. From the perspective of the politician, they are looking out for their constituents by helping out industrial interests, because in their eyes, that means jobs and development.
I agree there is a huge problem with the outsized influence of industry in the political realm, but I think it's a very complicated problem to untangle. The only way we have to fight it is to organize ourselves, which is usually extremely difficult.
I don't think this boundary would be that difficult to delineate and enforce. Political donations ought to come from personal bank accounts rather than corporate ones. Is it any more difficult than that?
So then you don't believe individuals have the right to organize to petition their representatives? Because any organization is going to mean pooling resources into a legal structure...like a corporation.
That's a good quibble. People should be allowed to organize. I suppose there should be a distinction between political organizations and profitable ones.
So a group "Whigs for America" pooling donations is fine, but a for-profit corporation spending millions on lobbying would not be fine.
The difference being that the former group is a non-profit collection of people concerned about some aspect of government.
There's nothing about the US Constitution that says that different elements of it don't conflict. The question precisely is working out where boundaries exist, and what trade-offs to make.
No, but changing the constitution is not a minor affair. You can't just propose one amendment through the legislative process, you have to launch a convention, and the country you get on the other side of that may not have much in common with the country now.
Please don't conflate lobbying with bribes. We all have the right to lobby (petition) our government.
Various Supremes expanded the notion that corporations are people, that money equals speech, and so forth. So many ways to rig the game in favor of capital (over democracy).
As an optimist, I predict the plutocrats will demand public financing of campaigns when they realized they're wasting their money. The money chase is an arms race with ever diminishing returns.
In this context, "lobby" doesn't just mean petitioning the government. It specifically means when you have someone whose full-time job is to try and influence legislators and other policymakers on behalf of one's employer.
In the early USA it was considered antithetical to democracy precisely because it gives a great advantage to people with the financial resources to hire a lobbyist. So for over 200 years now, the word "lobbying" has already had a particular definition in the context of the money=speech debate. I don't think that trying to redefine the the term in the way you propose makes your point so much as it hinders it by muddying the waters.
Maybe we could have a licensing regime for a newly defined lobbying organization, and then delegate the licensing requirements to a federal agency who has unilateral and arbitrary authority to alter licensing compliance
one of which will be to drastically limit actions possible for lobbyists
> nd then delegate the licensing requirements to a federal agency who has unilateral and arbitrary authority to alter licensing compliance
But then the lobbyists would start lobbying to loosen these restrictions...
The National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys actively lobbies for drug law reform, sentencing reform, and against civil forfeiture, mandatory minimums, the death penalty, and overcriminalization: https://www.nacdl.org/criminal-defense/death-penalty. [1] They're on the front lines of trying to reform the justice system, and your proposal would silence them (because you could just as easily say they "benefit" from those reforms because their clients do).
[1] And the bar as a whole is probably way to the left of the average person on criminal justice issues.
Please read my comments more carefully before criticizing them. I said that they should be barred from lobbying for "any law that is likely to result in more prisoners or higher sentences".
I'd love to see all of these organizations lobby for laws that are likely to result in overall decreases in inmate counts, and/or lower sentences.
Your proviso is irrelevant to my point: You've concocted this world model that tells you that criminal defense attorneys lobby in favor of stiffer prison sentences because it serves their monetary interests. My point is that your world view is wrong; its not about the merits of your hypothetical ban.
My world view is that anyone that stands to directly profit from laws that are likely to increase the inmate population or average sentence length should not be able to play a part in getting those laws passed.
So the government shouldn't only be deciding who can or can't lobby on a particular issue, but which side of the debate each respective party can or can't be on? "I'm sorry sir, but given your circumstances you may only support these Approved Beliefs."
So basically you want to outlaw lobbying for representation? That's the outcome of your proposals. A union is no different than an individual, except that many people are included in the group. Outlawing lobbying by unions means that I, if I were theoretically a prison guard, can't lobby (ask for representation) from my local lawmakers on issues that I think matter. Is that the world you want to live in? What if this were applied to a group you support, like restricting the EFF's ability to lobby because they have a conflict of interest.
I really think that many people advocating any type of lobbying restriction needs to stop and think about the consequences of what they are working towards before proceeding.
That is a world I'd like to live in. Such people suffer from a principal/agent problem - they gain more from the government as employees/contractors/etc than as citizens, so their interest is primarily in having more money funneled to them as employees. For this reason, restricting their lobbying/voting/etc activity as one of the terms of receiving government money is perfectly reasonable.
The EFF, in contrast, has no such conflict of interest. Any organization which does not take government money is just a consumer of government services. Their interest is the same as everyone else's - encouraging the government to do the best job possible.
No, I don't want to "basically outlaw lobbying for representation". I said nothing of the sort. I said that organizations that directly profit from criminal laws shouldn't be able to lobby for them. Criminal laws do tremendous damage to the lives of the people they affect, and as such need to be deliberated without the influence of people that will financially benefit from them.
And yes, a world where criminal laws are not able to be influenced by people that will profit from them is definitely one I want to live in.
Should we, as software developers and IT professionals, be able to lobby about information security? Net neutrality?
If we can't, and Verizon/Cox also can't (they also have a conflict), who is left? People who either don't care or lack enough knowledge of the issue to make reasonable policy recommendations?
Ask someone whose loved ones have been fatally poisoned due to government negligence in rubber-stamping an environmental impact report and I think they'd offer a feisty debate.
(Or anyone at the receiving end of military action, for that matter)
The point is that drawing a line between lobbying that affects prisons (nevermind a distinction between federal, local, and other institutions of incarceration) and lobbying that affects anything else can be a largely arbitrary affair.
I have no idea what happened to your loved ones or if they have been "fatally poisoned," and if so, who was responsible for that. What I do know, based on what you said, is that the government didn't forcibly lock them in a box for X years at gunpoint. They apparently failed to publish some kind of report you wanted them to publish. Not exactly the same thing.
Criminal laws are by far the most invasive laws we have on the books, and because of that they deserve special protections against those that would seek to exploit them.
I always found it amazing that people would bitch up a storm about private prisons when their numbers are so low and how much state, city, and even county prisons, were built just to profit off of incarceration namely through importing prisoners.
that and the they (politicians, police, etc) should be in prison themselves for their head nodding reaction to prison violence to include rape. just nodding your head and shrugging should never had been acceptable
The article above is from 2/29/09. A 2014 article[0] shows their guilty pleas were later rejected due to their behavior, and both given larger sentences.
> Both originally agreed to spend seven years in prison, but then Ciavarella talked exclusively with Newswatch 16.
> "I loved the juvenile court, I loved helping those kids. I would never do anything to hurt a child, that's just not what I do. That's not me. I was always there for those kids. I resent the fact that people think I did something improper. I didn't do anything improper when it came to the care of those kids," said Ciavarella in July of 2009.
> Days after that interview, a federal judge rejected the guilty pleas of Ciavarella and Conahan, saying their behavior didn't really accept guilt.
Other sources agree with the 28 year sentence. Here's one from 2013 regarding an appeal being denied, and as far as I can find it didn't go any higher.
Apparently at least one of them continued saying they were innocent after the plea deal (in which they admitted guilt), so a court threw out the plea and retried them in 2011, resulting in 17 and 28 year sentences instead of the plea of 7.25.
This was the one flaw in the otherwise excellent FBI and Pennsylvania Attorney General investigations.
They never should have allowed the number of jointly tried cases that they did. They used joint prosecution as a tactic, combining lesser hard-to-prove charges against one defendant with severe charges against another in the same trial, relying upon the strength of the evidence against one defendant to damn them both.
Regardless, their investigation was very beneficial in the long run. Low-level corruption used to be endemic in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area, until the Federal government came to town. Following the "Kids for Cash" case, the area became the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry into official abuse of office.
By the time the dust settled, close to two dozen officials were criminally charged, including a state senator, a very wealthy commercial real estate developer, and two county commissioners.
Normally I'd be unhappy about this sort of prosecutorial overreach, but in this case I guess the lesson would be not to overlook the corruption of fellow judges. High school students are held to that standard; I think we can hold judges to it. Even if the co-defendant didn't profit as enthusiastically from the false imprisonment of children, he had to have known it was happening.
Agreed, however this tactic was also used in run of the mill cash-envelope and bid fixing schemes.
I too am pleased with the outcome. However, the law is about fairness in process, not fairness in outcome. In a case like this, the judge is often so disgusted by the defendant that they make up their mind and find a legal justification afterwards.
The precedent judges set in order to convict "bad" defendants can then be used in other less serious cases. From this comes the common saying amongst lawyers, "Bad cases make bad law."
For example, raiding a paedophile's home without a warrant or probable cause is satisfying, and often just in outcome. However, it is not just in process if the judge allows the evidence to be admitted. If a precedent is set in that case, prosecutors will take it as judicial license to raid more homes without warrants. The evidence from those raids can then be admitted under whatever tortured theory the appellate judge used to ensure the paedophile was convicted.
Remember, once the government sets a precedent, there is nothing to keep them from applying it to you.
This occurred a few miles away from where I grew up. My mother's former law partner is the President Judge of the county, and another partner at her firm was appointed to fill one of the vacancies left open on the county bench. Both were uninvolved, assisted with the Federal investigation, and had no knowledge of the scheme. They were cleared of all wrongdoing and continued in their judicial role.
It's still unbelievable to me. These judges and contractors were well-respected members of the community. Yet they committed perhaps one of the most heinous breaches of trust possible in a justice system: selling children into prison for personal profit.
I met these men. They did not start out "evil." However, in a relatively isolated Rust Belt region, the judges are some of the most powerful political figures in the county. The conspirators messages show the slow progression from neutrality into almost gleeful corruption, as they became intoxicated with the power of the bench.
Well, that's just corruption of the worst kind, but private prisons or no, I'm betting this judge would have found an alternative stream of dirty money if private prisons didn't exist.
I mean, look I agree with you that they need to be closed, but there are likely better examples of them just being worse on merit, without having to dive into bribery and whatnot.
Right thing to do, but at the state level, that will be a tough fight. Knowing the group of people that are most likely to be imprisoned, tough chance.
If anyone is interested in organizing a campaign for their state representatives in California please feel free to hit me up for a free beta of our new grassroots advocacy platform.
Those numbers are deceptive. For example, they lump the entire $9.2M spent by Boeing into the "defense" category. Boeing is a pretty diverse aerospace and services company. They sell to many more areas of the government than the DOD and have many more interests in government policy beyond acquisitions programs. Dumping all of their lobbying efforts into "defense" unfairly distorts the category, especially since that number alone represents 1/6 of it.
That's pretty significant - once you factor in their other revenue from private industry plus sales to foreign countries. So if you were going to categorize Boeing as anything in the context of the US gov alone, defense seems appropriate.
Additionally, even cutting that number in half (for the sake of accuracy) only reduces the total defense aerospace category by $4.6 million ($38m -> $33.4m total) which doesn't make those numbers drastically different, or that link much less persuasive.
> Boeing got 40% of their revenue from the DoD in 2007 according to WikiInvest and that probably hasn't changed much today:
The total revenue for for the entire Defense, Space, and Security portion of their business was only 30% of the company's total revenue, per their most recent 10-K filing. Further, reviewing previous filings it appears revenue for this segment has been flat for the past decade while revenue for their commercial aircraft operations has more than doubled.
Furthermore, I have no idea how that site arrived at the portion of revenue specifically from the DOD, as Defense, Space, and Security has a number of other government customers. All the sourcing information there is vague and generic.
> That's pretty significant - once you factor in their other revenue from private industry plus sales to foreign countries. So if you were going to categorize Boeing as anything in the context of the US gov alone, defense seems appropriate.
So, a company becomes a defense company just because most of it's government revenue comes from the DOD? It's not about "the context of the US gov alone", it's about the context of its government business with respect to its total business.
> Additionally, even cutting that number in half (for the sake of accuracy) only reduces the total defense aerospace category by $4.6 million ($38m -> $33.4m total) which doesn't make those numbers drastically different, or that link much less persuasive.
First, I would call cutting the total of the defense lobbying number by nearly 10% significant. Second, that is just an example. How many other Boeings are on that list? How much are they inflating that apparently simplistic analysis?
While I don't know the answer to your question, I have always had a similar reaction to seeing actual numbers involved in lobbying. It usually went like this: someone would seem outraged at how much money a representative had received from "the oil and gas industry". Then I'd look at the numbers and think to myself, "There's no way that amount of money could buy what people are claiming that it bought."
that is so sad all the stats in the link you posted. hopefully with the rise of the internet and everyone becoming connected we can raise awareness and not let things like that happen anymore.
So, it's perfectly fine to personally enrich yourself by:
A) Working as a prison guard/admin (in which your job security/salary increase with incarceration);
B) Hiring released convicts (in which your model becomes increasingly profitable as more of the labor force is branded as less hireable due to greater incarceration);
C) Supplying goods to prisons (in which your specialization at the problems of delivery to prisons becomes more valuable with greater incarceration)
D) Lobbying for tough-on-crime laws due to the above incentives, as e.g. CO interest groups have done [1]
But running the prison itself? "That's too much, man!"
Frankly, the anti-private prison movement is, IMHO, very confused. Numerous groups financially profit from the prison system even when they're publicly run, and such prisons produce the same egregious incentives to encourage more incarceration. (See the three-strikes lobbying.)
It seems like a way to exploit anti-market, anti-profit bias to get the masses enraged at an enormous red herring -- which, by the way, is still only 6-16% [2].
We do need prisons. Some people are too dangerous to be allowed in society, and this will likely always be the case. So they must be guarded. (Technically, you're also guarding everyone else from them.) If it's immoral to work as a prison guard, it's also immoral to work as a policeman, or a firefighter, or a street cleaner - as your job becomes more secure when there are more criminals, or house fires, or litterers. Patent nonsense.
Hiring released convicts is also a good thing, in general - people go to prison, pay their debt to society, and come out. They need jobs, now.
And a person is going to need a bed sheet, a tooth brush, and toilet paper whether they're in prison or free.
D, I agree with, is wrong. And especially when done by the folks who do C.
There is a big difference between profiting from people versus profiting indirectly through supplies that a public prison uses.
The incentives are totally backwards. The state should be encouraging people to not be in prison, but instead we have monetary incentives in place for putting more people in prison and keeping them there.
Not true -- the incentives are the same, and we see how they have led CO orgs at public prisons to lobby for longer sentences, exactly the danger that's somehow unique to private prisons. And I explained how the same incentives exist for all the other private orgs that specialize in servicing prisons.
I haven't heard a single argument from anyone about how it's even slightly moral or good for anyone other than the private prisons to use them. There is nothing better about them - I hope they all go bankrupt.
Have a look into the Barrier Fund (was the Vice Fund), and clones: http://vicefund.com
> The Barrier Fund will concentrate its net assets in industries that have significant barriers to entry including the alcoholic beverages, tobacco, gaming and defense/aerospace industries.
Private schools are for profit. They are generally regarded as the best education you can get for K-12 schooling (at least where I live in the US). Same goes for many of the colleges in the US (actually, wait, isn't that the difference between a college and a university?). For profit schools pretty much kick ass.
I think the exception comes when the government contracts a business to run a school. This is a very different arrangement and is prone to all of the horrors that come along with the government signing contracts for various services. Once the contract is in place, given how slow the government is to act, all one needs to do is comply with the contract enough to not lose it outright.
This is far more false than true. Most private schools are, in fact, not-for-profit. All of the house-hold private university names, except for University of Phoenix, are all not-for-profit. Harvard, Yale, etc. are all not-for-profit.
> They are generally regarded as the best education you can get for K-12 schooling
The only for profit K-12 schools I know of are basically web-based GED prep courses. Not exactly the "best education you can get", but it'll get you that McDonalds gig.
This isn't even true of not-for-profit private schools. There are plenty of public schools, e.g. in wealthy suburbs, that are far higher quality than your average Catholic private school, for example.
> actually, wait, isn't that the difference between a college and a university?
No, not at all. The only difference is that a university a) has multiple colleges and b) offers graduate degrees.
Colleges and universities can be private for-profit, private not-for-profit, or public.
> For profit schools pretty much kick ass
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in higher education, for-profit universities are usually bottom of the barrel in terms of both prestige and quality.
No worries bursting my bubble, I learned a bunch, so that was cool. I'll have to take a look at the private K-12 schools in my area. I assumed they were going to the benefit of whoever owned the schools.
As a former K-12 private schooler, the one I went to was non-profit. It eventually went out of business due to being run a little bit too non-profit even though it existed for 20 years. I really enjoyed my time there and was sad to see it go out of business.
Many private schools are not profitable institutions by a long shot. They could use a little bit more profit motive sometimes.
Many private schools are either:
* some religious institution, like a catholic school
* some really old private school that has kept on going because it's where all the rich kids go to with a relatively large endowment.
* opening with a specific charter in mind, like a sudbury school
A lot of charters are private, for-profit schools, but you are correct that private schools are mostly non profit (IIRC most private K-12 schools are religious nonprofits.)
that is any interesting connection. the for profit prisons seem to be worse than the govt run counterparts, but for profit schools seem to vary on the effectiveness with their govt counterparts. i would guess there would be some inverse corelation btwn the avg age of the student and overall effectivness of the school - my experience is that the private schools for highschool and younger seem to do better, while college for profit seem to do worse.
K-12 public schools in the us are a variant of prison / house arrest. They even make up this crime of truancy if kids miss more than 3 days of school in a quarter.
The problem with engineering our way to a utopia, or at least, a humane government and economy, is determining who gets to write the specs that the engineers implement. It basically the same problem of deciding who should govern us, and how much of our own autonomy we should delegate to them. We're still going to have the same problems with a technocracy, that we already have with representative democracy.
I mean.... I do plan on looking at the 10-K to form an objective opinion about it
There's really almost no scenario where I'm going to say "yeah I don't want to be in a position to make a downpayment on a house by analyzing and pursuing that profitable scenario"
International terrorism makes great money for the military complex, when a good customer uses it as an excuse for an invasion. And then employment goes up, people focus away from the domestic problems, politicians get their kickbacks without sacrificing an election, you've heard this story a million times...
You might want to rephrase. I assume you're saying, the perversity goes well beyond prisons, including the companies that profit from war and paranoia generally. But as your comment stands, its hard to tell.
CCA is spending about a million dollars on lobbying per year lately. That's down from a few years back when they were at 2-4M. If you're up for it, you can dig around and try to figure out what/who they're buying here: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021940...
I honestly don't understand the incentive part. Can you spell it out?
If the prison company was also in charge of sentencing people to prisons, I would get it. But as long as they merely implement the sentences the court system decides, what are the perverse incentives?
Private prisons are compensated based on the number of prisoners they house, not on the recidivism rate. Private prison companies then further lobby for harsher sentences.
Not to mention they're legally required to attempt increasing profits (maximizing shareholder value) forever. If the supply of prisoners is fixed, how else can that be done other than creating worse and worse prisons?
which proves the only point that was being made? Does your mind frequently attempt to lessen the blow by noticing the blow does in fact exist but is small?
If I unknowingly had money invested in private prisons I would gladly cop the loss on the chin and spend a few moments reviewing investment policies my fund uses.
I wonder if there is a market for a "moral fund." Meaning a normal diversified fund but they avoid certain markets and industries. I'd pay a slightly higher fee for that.
So there is a fairly significant bounce back starting at ~12:40. My best guess would be profit taking from shorters? I wonder if there would be any way to know who shorted this, it seems like the perfect type of thing for some inside trading in DC to take place.
Short interest on CXW was only 8.8%. Probably just digesting the news, realizing this was panic selling and states still held the vast, vast majority of private prisons.
The same entity (government, state or federal) that sentences individuals to imprisonment should be the same entity responsible for bearing the burden of imprisoning the individual.
If you mean the economic burden, yes, but I don't think they need to bear all the burden
My big complaint with private prisons, as they stand today, is that they tend to get paid based on heads and beds. As such, prisons are rewarded when prisoners behave badly (extending their stay), and when former prisoners reoffend (repeating their stay). There are no countervailing economic pressures.
If we want prisons to work, we need the economics to work in favor of societal goals. Everything else equal, a prison that generates low recidivism should get paid more than one that generates high recidivism, because they're eliminating future costs.
> If we want prisons to work, we need the economics to work in favor of societal goals.
This is true, but we already ignore that for our prison population. Otherwise, our system would be less punitive and more aimed to reformation and building productive citizens.
Yes, the economic burden but also the ethical burden of ensuring their sentence is administered fairly. Corporeal punishment at the hands of the guards is not a fair administration of the punishment.
I agree, legislators should add more budget as they expand the definition of criminal behavior. If you want to criminalize up-skirting, all the power but allocate money for the costs. Do not put the burden on corrections department to find money, because you have new prisoners coming your way. Much of the burden of costs move to prisoners was because politicians want to expand the definition of criminal behavior but not the burden of increasing prison population.
I guess? I don't think that's why private prisons are wrong, though. Private prisons have an incentive to keep you incarcerated as long as possible, because that's how they make money. The government, on the other hand, has little incentive to keep you in prison; they'd rather you get back into society so you can start paying taxes again.
The government has many interests. Their goals are driven by politicians who need votes. The skyrocketing rate of imprisonment comes in large part from the public's seemingly insatiable demand for harsher sentences. The only things that voters seem to hate more are tax increases.
Inmates sometimes end up staying prison longer than their original sentence because of crimes they commit in prison. The point I was making is that a private prison warden has much more of an incentive to punish those crimes severely than a public one does.
Exactly this. From TFA, this is federal prisons only, and affects precisely 13 prisons. That just leaves the other ~130 private state prisons.
The plummeting stock will rebound the moment the market stops panicking, and some vultures will make a killing. It's big business, and they won't go quietly into the night.
No. These facilities are privately operated, but are owned by the federal government. The operators can't choose to turn them into state prisons, no more than they could choose to turn them into hotels.
The government can choose to do that (in those cases, sell off the property). Not private prison operators. The issue of property rights, not the inherent concepts.
I'm sure that's on their radar in terms of contingency planning, but it shouldn't be a surprise - looks like sentencing policy changes in the past years (thanks Obama, for reals) have reduced the inmate population, and this is an adjustment to those policies.
Call your state reps: http://tryvoices.com/
ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/end-prisons-profit