Privatize the Prisons

Overcrowded prisons. It’s a problem indeed. Our culture has become so corrupt that our prisons are completely full, and we don’t have room for any new convicts. What’s more, these prisons are very expensive, and cost taxpayers a bundle. Building new prisons is more costly than we can afford, with the budgets already broken as it is. Yes, a real problem.

Solution: Privatize it.

How in the world do you privatize a prison?

Prison convicts are capable laborers. They have chosen to use their skills for ill conceived schemes contrary to the laws of the land. But they have skills. To just coupe them up behind bars, shooting the breeze is a ridiculous waste of wealth. They are moochers, not producing any value to society, but sucking out their life sustenance from it. Why in the world are they not at least providing for themselves?

Think of it this way. A businessman produces a certain product. He needs cheap labor to produce it. The government sells a prison full of cheap labor to this businessman, passing the duties of securing them, feeding and housing them, protecting them, etc. to the business. The business then gets a decent sized labor force, employing the prisoners in the work of their business. It’s really not a bad trade at all. The business maintains the prison, keeps prisoners secured, feeds them, disciplines them when necessary, educates and trains them, and puts them to work. The government not only is rid of the responsibility of securing and providing for these convicts, but they are paid to get rid of it.

There will have to be audits and assurances that the 8th Amendment rights aren’t being violated, and that the prisoners are being treated fairly. But overall, the responsibilities for these prisoners fall to the businessmen. I hesitate to make the comparison, but it really is akin to the slave trade of old. These convicts have, by their improper infringement on the rights of others, forfeit their own rights as citizens, and therefore have lost their rights of liberty. They are then, by definition, slaves of the state. The state has every right, as slave owners did in the past, to sell their slave property to others who would certainly use them far more efficiently than the state does.

A prison, run by a business, will be run like a business. Those who are productive will be compensated. Those who are not will be incentivized. Again, protections will necessarily be in place to ensure that cruel and unusual is not a part of the incentivizing. But certainly positive incentives, and occasional negative ones, will prod prisoners to be better and do more. Prisoners could even be paid. Weird concept, I know. But wouldn’t it be a great if a convict could earn savings through hard work, so that a decent sized fund is there waiting for him when he gets out, thus enabling him to make a new start for himself? Or he could continue to provide for his family while behind bars. And the time in a real, productive, legal business will give them skills and experience that will help them get work when they get released.

Let’s let the private market have a crack at the problem. I bet it fixes itself better than anyone would have hoped for.