Tag Archives: costs

Finally, some sense…

Well…I think you may be as disgusted and tired of Trump as I am so none of that today…instead, I want to comment on the announcement yesterday that the federal government will no long support the private, for profit prison system that has grown to gigantic proportions in the past 15 years or so. Now, most of these prisons are operated on the state level under the misguided premise that privatizing this responsibility of the state will save money…a mantra of repubs across this country that has been shown to be wrong everywhere it has been tried…but that is not the worst part of it…when the contracts are signed with these private prison corporations, there is a minimum amount of prisoners that are written into the contracts and if the city, county, or state don’t supply them, they have to pay a penalty…now, I may be a little dense at times, but it is pretty obvious that these types of contracts practically guarantee that every little infraction will be criminalized to ensure the quota is met….and the profit motive leads to substandard food, and just warehousing the prisoners since the private corporations have no interest in rehabilitation. Then there is the cost angle…it has never been shown that private prisons save any money to the public at all…but just enrich those who run them…an who invariably donate to repubs to get the laws passed that allow them. The same cost cutting was tried by the army in Iraq, buying private soldiers at 150K per when a real soldier was only about 50K with benefits. Again, the real goal was to line the pockets of the big donors, not to save any money…the saving just being a smokescreen to have private corporations bleed our tax dollars into their pockets. It is a small step, but it is at least a step…now, the same thing needs to happen at the state level and get rid of these bloodsuckers once and for all…geez…