America's prison population, the private prison industry, and Arizona SB 1070

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NPR has made some startling reporting about Arizona's controversial Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act or Arizona SB 1070. They did a two part series on October 28th and 29th: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law and Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny

That role of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is the kicker in all this. Lawmakers pay $ 50 fee in this club, companies pay tens of thousands - and legally it's not lobbying, just interested people speaking about legislation, and ALEC granting 'scholarships' for lawmakers interested in 'educating themselves' in consultation with industries at ALEC conferences.

There lawmakers and industries in a 'public private partnership' sit together and write inspired conservative, free market-orientated, limited-government laws. And it is not called lobbying, because under the letter of the law it isn't Ain't it great?

You are a private prison corporation and want to 'enter into new markets' like immigration detentions, act in your shareholder's interests? Make sure that there will be enough arrests to force the government to send prisoners your way - by having laws like SB 1070 enacted, or policies like Bush's 'Operation Streamline' *, and lobby against ending the drug war.

One way is to say with a stern voice that 'THE LAW MUST BE ENFORCED!' while lobbying for laws staying as harsh as possible (and do so in a way circumventing lobbying laws through ALEC). Keeping the laws tough is essentially the only way for prison companies to line their pockets - necessarily at taxpayers expense. That is what they do. Lenient laws are bad for business. I see a probable link between that and the odd phenomenon of America affording itself the largest prison population in the world.

Allowing a private prison industry to exist with a profit interest to keep prison population high is simply insane. No other country has such an abomination, for good reason. It's an effing travesty.

Spoiler

* at considerable cost, yielding questionable results [PDF]. Since its inception in 2005, Operation Streamline has overwhelmed the Federal court system with undocumented border-crossing immigration cases, led to the expansion of for-profit private detention facilities along the border (source: p18 [PDF])

 

America has a larger prison population than anyone else because so many other people use 'other solutions'. I read an article yesterday about China. They don't jail theirs, they just put them in crap mental wards for decades without diagnosis.

In addition, it seems SB 1070 may have backfired if your conspiracy theory is correct. Estimates say about 100,000 illegals have left the state after the passing of SB1070. That's 100,000 they won't be getting in their prison population any more.

 

It isn't my conspiracy theory but NPR's reporting. And that isn't a conspiracy either. America has now a prison industry lobby. What NPR's reporting describe is just a logical application of lobbying and market interest on policies of crime. Since prisons were privatised this has been going on on auto-pilot. I think it is a hare brained and destructive scheme. Introducing a profit interest in law enforcement in the largest sense, as America has done, is a harmful concept bound to backfire.

The law on drugs is arguably failing. Yet entrenched interests make sure that these policies persist without critical re-examination despite their vast cost and ineffectiveness.

One doesn't need to be a conspiracy theorist to come to my conclusion.

PS: It is a truism that almost any business or industry cartel will legislate more profit into law if it acquires the lobbying power to do so, and will follow it by attempting to keep influence over the politicians that passed it, attacking those against it, and attempting to improve upon the previous legislation with even more profitable laws. It is irrational to assume that the 'prison industry' is an exception.

An older, but still relevant article from the Atlantic: The Prison-Industrial Complex

Then there also is the obvious transparency issue inherent in the ALEC approach to legislation. That goes beyond policies of crime.

Is that so? How? Iirc the largest portion of prisoners in US prisons is currently doing time on drug or drug related charges. That has probably a lot to do with US drug laws being draconian, and significantly harsher than in, to coin a phrase, any place south of Saudi Arabia or Singapore.

And who said that it is worth it? The mass incarceration in the US probably has done grievous harm to the US economically, in direct costs as much as in opportunity costs.

 

How about comparing the US to places a tad more... civilized, such as Western Europe or Canada?

 

I already addressed how in my last post. And I'll agree that America's war on Marajuana, at least, has done much more harm than good, but if you include other forms of incarceration and execution, you see that even with the war on drugs the US isn't as bad as many try to make it seem. Still, we're not as good as most of the rest of the western world on that front.

 

Based upon what evidence?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

Now, that is a "documented" rate. Certainly countries like China are worse, and much of it is "undocumented." Nevertheless, the US is pretty bad compared to most other "free" nations, as Taza points out.

 

Simple: Truth from the gut.