Adam Weinberg
Goldwater Republican
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html
So, there is a such thing as a prison-industrial complex.
It seems to me that any savings to the taxpayer that can be promoted by private prisons--or competition that can promote system-wide savings--can also be provided by sufficiently enforcing strict regulation and inspection of public prisons.
Not to depart for too long from the subject at hand, a critic may ask why I would consider this state-only approach sufficient for prisons, but not the cure-all in the case of schools.
The short answer is that we want to incentivize the expansion of educational opportunities in the country, and the only way to do that for the largest number of people is to allow outside-the-box innovation and competition that provides for diverse student needs, whether that's charter schools, vouchers, etc.
We don't, however, want to expand or incentivize imprisonment in the United States! We want to offer preventative measures that keep people from going down that path and also tempering the state from imprisoning unnecessarily.
I am not enough of a political scientist to know the proper terminology, but there's something about an expanding system of prisons in a country that suggests its public priorities are backward.
Prisons and the justice system are a basic government fixture that we pay for because they are designed to provide a benefit to our general society. They are a regulator on misuses of power--just as elections assist in a transition of power--and their purpose should remain as such. Prison population may ebb and flow with times, certainly. The economic hardships are unfortunately turning many to both violent and economic offenses. But the private element in either of these issues can concentrate the social benefit to a few hands, and invest greater powers in government than was intended.
We expect as citizens in a free society that people who are incarcerated are held for the purposes of protecting the public safety, enforcing laws justly, and where applicable for lesser offenses, to rehabilitate offenders to become productive citizens.
In this case, "I've chucked away mah free market principles" to save my free society principles. I don't think we should be going down a road that invites special interests to line the pockets of political leaders who create or enforce laws for the purpose of creating more laws and more "criminals" to put behind bars.
This is not just about the war on drugs, though that is a significant part of this issue, but about any class of criminals that could potentially arise if these interests hold sway in our country. Recent experience shows us that what is a very normal thing today could become a crime tomorrow given some unpredictable emergencies in the country. Not to casually throw around the F-word, but does it not surely promote Fascism to allow a small but powerful group of corporations to profit from the rise of authoritarian power?
The subject of schools is more relevant to this discussion than I previously let on, because we are at the moment a nation with far too many young people dropping out of school and finding their way into the prison system at either the juvenile or adult level.
We need to create incentives for the building of innovative schools and the appropriate maintenance of prisons- not building prisons and allowing the school system to stagnate under one-size-fits all. Worse yet, at this time we seem to be a country that is directed toward building prisons and closing schools despite the true needs of the nation being in the opposite.
How we prosper as a country in the future will depend on if we can reverse these priorities. The prisons and the governments which administrate them are supposed to serve the purposes of society, but all too often today they seem to serve the purposes of the governments, the political class, and to the detriment of the society which must cope with the generational effects of expansive imprisonment.
So, there is a such thing as a prison-industrial complex.
It seems to me that any savings to the taxpayer that can be promoted by private prisons--or competition that can promote system-wide savings--can also be provided by sufficiently enforcing strict regulation and inspection of public prisons.
Not to depart for too long from the subject at hand, a critic may ask why I would consider this state-only approach sufficient for prisons, but not the cure-all in the case of schools.
The short answer is that we want to incentivize the expansion of educational opportunities in the country, and the only way to do that for the largest number of people is to allow outside-the-box innovation and competition that provides for diverse student needs, whether that's charter schools, vouchers, etc.
We don't, however, want to expand or incentivize imprisonment in the United States! We want to offer preventative measures that keep people from going down that path and also tempering the state from imprisoning unnecessarily.
I am not enough of a political scientist to know the proper terminology, but there's something about an expanding system of prisons in a country that suggests its public priorities are backward.
Prisons and the justice system are a basic government fixture that we pay for because they are designed to provide a benefit to our general society. They are a regulator on misuses of power--just as elections assist in a transition of power--and their purpose should remain as such. Prison population may ebb and flow with times, certainly. The economic hardships are unfortunately turning many to both violent and economic offenses. But the private element in either of these issues can concentrate the social benefit to a few hands, and invest greater powers in government than was intended.
We expect as citizens in a free society that people who are incarcerated are held for the purposes of protecting the public safety, enforcing laws justly, and where applicable for lesser offenses, to rehabilitate offenders to become productive citizens.
In this case, "I've chucked away mah free market principles" to save my free society principles. I don't think we should be going down a road that invites special interests to line the pockets of political leaders who create or enforce laws for the purpose of creating more laws and more "criminals" to put behind bars.
This is not just about the war on drugs, though that is a significant part of this issue, but about any class of criminals that could potentially arise if these interests hold sway in our country. Recent experience shows us that what is a very normal thing today could become a crime tomorrow given some unpredictable emergencies in the country. Not to casually throw around the F-word, but does it not surely promote Fascism to allow a small but powerful group of corporations to profit from the rise of authoritarian power?
The subject of schools is more relevant to this discussion than I previously let on, because we are at the moment a nation with far too many young people dropping out of school and finding their way into the prison system at either the juvenile or adult level.
We need to create incentives for the building of innovative schools and the appropriate maintenance of prisons- not building prisons and allowing the school system to stagnate under one-size-fits all. Worse yet, at this time we seem to be a country that is directed toward building prisons and closing schools despite the true needs of the nation being in the opposite.
How we prosper as a country in the future will depend on if we can reverse these priorities. The prisons and the governments which administrate them are supposed to serve the purposes of society, but all too often today they seem to serve the purposes of the governments, the political class, and to the detriment of the society which must cope with the generational effects of expansive imprisonment.
