The important difference is motivation. For-profit prisons, and services for them, have short-term capitalist goals: make as much money as possible in the near term, and preserve your advantage in the long term. Divorced of ethics, clearly lobbying for hasher criminal penalties is in their interests. From their perspective, the more people in prison for longer the better, especially since that will increase the recidivism rate, thus feeding the whole machine.
Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way. Rather, government should be motivated by the welfare of the entire population, and by reducing all of the costs of crime or undesirable behavior. This would likely lead to shorter sentences, or non-custodial penalties, for non-violent or non-dangerous offenders; automatic restoration of voting rights; humane prison environments with good and timely healthcare; etc.
Those solutions would directly harm for-profit prison companies. Which IMO is an excellent thing. Capitalism does nothing more than afford concentration of capital, and increasing skill and specialization in keeping people in a box just to serve those ends strikes me as deeply unethical.
>Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way.
Should? Why are we talking about should instead of what actually happens? Politicians are motivated by getting more votes. Government employees are motivated by other factors, but generally by getting the most money with the least amount of investment (same as most humans). The end result is pretty nasty abuses still happening.
> Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way. Rather, government should be motivated by the welfare of the entire population, and by reducing all of the costs of crime or undesirable behavior.
Except... it's not. That is literally what people are referring to when we talk about the prison-industrial complex. The government absolutely does have a profit motive (and it turns out, it's the same profit motive shared by private industry, just captured or executed by the state instead).
Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way. Rather, government should be motivated by the welfare of the entire population, and by reducing all of the costs of crime or undesirable behavior. This would likely lead to shorter sentences, or non-custodial penalties, for non-violent or non-dangerous offenders; automatic restoration of voting rights; humane prison environments with good and timely healthcare; etc.
Those solutions would directly harm for-profit prison companies. Which IMO is an excellent thing. Capitalism does nothing more than afford concentration of capital, and increasing skill and specialization in keeping people in a box just to serve those ends strikes me as deeply unethical.