Tensu wrote:
I can't even see the argument for private prisons in the name of small government being made. As the private prison is still funded by taxpayer money, but the taxpayers would presumably have less ability to influence the activities of a private prison than they would a public one, if anything it is bigger government as it takes control of prisons out of the hands of the taxpayers while still requiring them to fund them.
That's precisely the point. The central precept of the small-government ideology is that anything the government can do the private sector can do better. Period. This precept is applied to everything, from trash collection to education to prisons. Let the free market reign, we are told, & whatever results from this we must accept as right & just. Corruption. Mass incarceration. Horribly violent prisons. Imprisonment of juveniles for minor offenses. That's the American way.
Privatization has also proved to be a convenient means of breaking public-sector unions & enriching politically connected businessmen.
11 May 2013, 10:27 pm
