"Corporate" Prisons

Myopia and Prejudice

"Bomber" who posts sporadically at Tumeke! has recently favoured us with an ideological broadside against the idea of prisons being managed by corporates. It is not worth much--except as an illustration of the prejudice and cant of those who substitute slogans for thought.

Here follows the fisked piece: firstly, an excerpt from the NZ Herald:

More prisoners will have to work under a National government, and the money they earn will go towards a victims' fund. Those who refuse will lose their right to parole. National leader John Key announced plans to boost work and rehabilitation schemes yesterday, and confirmed it would allow the private sector to run prisons again. Mr Key said a National government would spend $7 million a year boosting the number of inmates in industry-based work from 2500-3500 by the end of 2011.
Mr Key said prisoners were usually paid between 20c and 60c an hour but were charged out at market labour rates.

Then follows one long sentence from Bomber:

So we enter the time of the corporate Gulag,

One would have thought that a "corporate Gulag" would refer to a place where companies and their managers were incarcerated under harsh conditions, but in Bomber's lexicon it means a prison being managed by a private company, contracting its services to the Corrections Department. Presumably, Bomber's lexicon also has "state Gulag" to refer to prisons staffed by employees of the Corrections Department. We doubt it. The terms "corporate" and "Gulag" are used to vent spleen, not analyse or critique.

Prisoners forced to work at what is effectively slave labour where smug National Party supporters get to race past motorways where chain gangs sing spirituals under a hot South Auckland sky,

Under the current "state Gulags" prisoners work for between 20 and 60 cents an hour; the product of their labour and services is sold at market rates. Presumably, under the present system, Bomber and his mates race smugly past prisons where chain gangs are currently working, and they feel good about it, by virtue of it being a "state Gulag" not a corporate one.

National is proposing that the difference not be ploughed back into the "state Gulag" system, but be put into a fund to be used to compensate victims.

so hateful has our social policy become it has been warped into this abortion, exactly as it has been in America with the same vested interests of longer prison sentences and larger prison slave work force,

One of the most abiding myths amongst left-wing commentators is that because the private sector must make a profit in order to survive, its motivation is intrinsically and necessarily exploitative and evil. State entities escape all such evil motivations. As soon as a bureaucracy is formed it is systemically righteous by definition. All possible self-serving and evil motivations disappear.

So, privately run prisons have a vested interest in keeping people in prison as long as possible, and having as many of those prisoners working in slave labour as feasible. Really. Presumably Bomber has chosen to overlook the fact that prison sentences come from courts, not prisons. Time in prison is finite. Corrections cannot unilaterally alter the terms of a prison sentence. So, a rather large non sequitur, Mr Bomber.

Secondly, National is proposing that labour be voluntary. No prisoner can be compelled to labour (as at present), so hardly the emotive "prison slave work force" Bomber describes. But, National is also proposing that if a prisoner chooses not to labour and effectively work for the restitution of his victim(s) he would not be eligible for parole. In other words, working up to forty hours a week offers the potential of a shortened sentence--the precise opposite of what Mr Bomber is alleging. Ooops. Don't let the facts get in the way of a myopic idological diatribe.

Private prisons don’t give a toss about rehabilitation, they care only for longer sentences (meaning the prisoners stay longer, meaning they get more money to hold them)

Mr Bomber is fixated upon this recurring fetish over evil motivations being intrinsic to privately run prisons. He argues that the profit motive incentivises them to have more prisoners and longer sentences, so the prison management company gets paid more. Dearie me. Firstly, let's deal with the cant. So, Corrections does not have a similar evil incentivisation. What about the senior managers of state run prisons--the bigger the prisons, the greater their responsibilities, the higher their salaries? Of course. What about the Corrections unions? The more prisoners, the more prison staff, the more powerful the union, the bigger the bargaining power. Corrections is utterly at risk of the same evil, corrupt, self-serving practices. In fact, far more at risk than privately run prisons because their motivations are systemic--part of the system.

With privately run prisons, the discipline of needing to make a profit offers much more flexibility in motivation. Contractual terms can be set to offer the company more revenue if defined outcomes are achieved. Thus, any perverse motivations can be far more effectively managed and controlled by contractual terms.

Secondly, the blind prejudice: are we to understand that private firms contracting services to the government are likewise compromised, such that all outcomes create greater problems? Take for example the State education system contracting private firms to clean schools. Is Bomber going to argue that such arrangements are inherently evil because private school caretaking firms are incentivised via the profit motive to keep schools dirtier for longer, so they get more work and earn bigger profits? Really. Is that the way it works? To be consistent he must argue that way--but this is both ignorant and absurd.

Or, take private diagnostic labs. Bomber, if he were to be consistent, would have to argue that all private diagnostic labs contracted to the public health system are evilly incentivised to misdiagnose, overtest, destroy records, repeat work, etc. all for the incentive of more profit. Or take consulting specialists contracted to public hospitals. Clearly, this must be wicked in Mr Bomber's warped world view because private specialists have an incentive to botch operations so they have to be repeated, thereby getting bigger fees--or perform operations that are not necessary, increasing their profits. What a strange warped Alice-in-Wonderland world Bomber lives within.

and while holding them they get to implement prison labour as a cheap workforce, they make money off the labour of prisoners –

Actually, Bomber has this completely around the wrong way. Under the current system Corrections uses prison labour as a cheap workforce. In Bomber's terms, currently prisoners are currently slaves of the State--something he conveniently overlooks. The margin on their "slave labour" is currently paid to the government. Under the system National is proposing neither the State nor any private prison management firm would benefit from the margin on prisoners' work--but the victims of crime. Seems much fairer and appropriate to us.

see how in that equation how the Private Prison doesn’t give a toss about rehabilitation and why only the state should be allowed to incarcerate you against your will and not a corporation?

Once again Bomber graces us with two wonderful non sequiturs. Since under National's proposal both bureaucratically run and private sector run prisons won't benefit from the work of prisoners, there is no argument against privately run prisons per se. But in neither case, does that policy have any possible bearing at all upon rehabilitation whether in a bureaucractically or private sector adminstered prison. If anything, the terms of the policy actually encourage rehabilitation, assuming that meaningful work disciplines will help assist prisoner rehabilitation.

And, true to form, he ends his diatribe with one last non-sequitur--namely, that privately run prisons mean that the state is not the incercerator, but a corporation. This is a juvenile confusion between an principal and an agent. Maybe if Bomber had attended a privately run school he would have learnt the distinction years ago. Or, maybe not. There is such a phenomenon as invincible ignorance.