Private prisons are immoral. We hold all citizens to a certain standard of law—punishing them should be our burden to bear as well.

I'm a libertarian and hate big government and would support ending most government monopolies. That being said, one thing the government SHOULD have a monopoly on is law enforcement and criminal rehabilitation.
How could anyone think that putting corporations in charge of prisons is a good idea is beyond me. America needs real prison reform, like working to rehabilitate criminals and not just locking them away to be abused in a pen. That can only happen through government, not the private sector.
We've seen how much of a disaster the military industrial complex is, and the prison industrial complex is just as bad. Remember that Judge who sentenced a teenager to years in prion for possession of a pipe? A teenager who killed himself rather than go back to jail? Well, that judge was bribed by the private prison industry.
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.co…
How can anyone read that and still support private prisons I don't know.
Just further proof that when big government and big business hook up, you get the very worst of both.

@2
Fuck! Copy and pasted the wrong link. I bad. Here's the one to the story I was talking about:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/…

The math just doesn't work out on these virtual monopolies. There is no effective competition since changing prison providers is so difficult. We simply add the cost of their profit on top of the expenses we already carry and we get no benefit in the way of reduced liability.

I am shocked that economists can be bought. Shocked.

There is no greater threat to our national security than the prison/industrial complex and it's corruption.

In some sort of weird vortex-induced alternative universe, I *gulp* agree with 'collectivism sucks'. I'm sure that will be corrected by tomorrow.

Private prisons are repugnant in every way. They provide no benefit to society, the government, prisoners, or staff. The only person(s) that benefit in any way is the corporate profiteers—the 1%—that run them. The US imprisons a higher percentage of our population than anyplace else on earth. These private prisons have a profit motive to see that we imprison more of our citizens for as long as possible. Every word they utter should be treated with the greatest skepticism... as should this 'study'.

@8 - when you're right, you're right I guess.

I'm certainly no constitutional law expert, but I'd really like to see notion of selling people convicted of crimes to privately held institutions like this be challenged.