Profit and the purpose of prisons

I've written about three areas of society that are incompatible with the profit motive, meaning they should be run government, not privatized. Two of them are education and health care. Sorry, it would be difficult for me to come up with links.

Stephen Henderson, editor of the editorial page of the Free Press, documents why the third area, prisons, should not be privatized. The goal of a prison should not be warehousing inmates, but preparing them for life after prison. A component of that should be community based work to help the inmate adapt to society. And that costs money. Another aspect is justice-based sentencing and parole.

But privatizing prisons would mean such things as skimping on meals (the issue that got Henderson started) which means a released inmate is ill or malnourished, giving him a harder time to reenter society. That's if the prisoners don't riot over food. It also means the company running prisons will push for sentencing guidelines that increase the inmate population, their source of profit. That's counter to justice.

The way to measure prison success is through social and justice measurements. The bottom line won't tell you that. Privatizing prisons works against the worthwhile outcomes.