privatising the justice system
An example of why prisons (and police, and prosecutors) are best kept in public hands: making findings of guilt and consequential imprisonment profitable creates an incentive to put people in prison who don’t deserve to be there, which leads to this – two judges who have been giving offenders unwarranted sentences of detention in exchange for kickbacks:
When someone is sent to a detention centre, the company running the facility receives money from the county government to defray the cost of incarceration.
So as more children were sentenced to the detention centre, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.
Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced to detention centres for minor offences that would typically have been classified as misdemeanours, according to the Juvenile Law Centre, a Philadelphia non-profit group.
This may have some connection with the fact that the U.S. has over 2.3 million of its citizens behind bars (and one in nine black men), more as a percentage than countries like Russia and China. The fact that prosecutors and judges in some states are elected by popular vote may also contribute to that startling figure by creating an incentive for both to “vigorously” pursue and punish “wrongdoers” (i.e. put as many bad guys behind bars as possible to appease the mob without asking too many questions about the way in which it’s done).
I did like the frankness of one of the judges having been caught, however:
Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true,” Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court. “My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.
Perhaps he’s banking on the judge who sentences him being prepared to take his expression of remorse in giving a more lenient sentence…
Several films have shown us that many good things come from privatised prisons, though…
I can think of Fortress (1 & 2), Death Race and…umm…ok, so I can’t think of any more, but where else would we see technology like the Intestinator developed? Or stream awesome violent car racing to the world?
Since many of the US prison population were incarcerated for drug-related crimes, one possible solution might be to nationalize marijuana production. Drug offenders could then be removed from detention centres and put to work on government farms (unpaid and with Intestinators, but also with unlimited free weed.) This would reduce the prison population and eliminate the need for private jails, and the combined windfall from sales of the drug and reduced law enforcement costs could be spent on democracy equipment and ammunitions.
Or, they could legalize it.
Snack consumption would skyrocket.
And productivity and motivation would be at an all time low.
I’m sure there are more. Running Man is basically about the U.S. justice system and appears to be fairly accurate.
Actually, this handy thread about ‘futuristic prison movies’:
http://www.sf-fandom.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=6243
lists a few more, including Escape from New York and Face/Off (shit that movie was terrible), and Demolition Man.