<story><title>SOPA died in 2012, but Obama administration wants to revive part of it</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/sopa-died-in-2012-but-obama-administration-wants-to-revive-part-of-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Prophasi</author><text>By definition? That requires some justification.&lt;p&gt;The justice system still sets the parameters and manages the procedures by which sentences are handed down. If a court determines you&amp;#x27;re going to prison for 10 years, you&amp;#x27;re going -- the private company manages your environment for that time.&lt;p&gt;And given that private parties also manage your medical care, hospital stays, air travel, car manufacture, work environments, home building, and thousands of other mechanisms and environments that determine your safety and quality of living, I struggle with finding a moral difference when it comes to prisons.&lt;p&gt;You could argue that these other things are voluntary and prison isn&amp;#x27;t, but it&amp;#x27;s involuntary even if run by government; most inmates would opt out either way.&lt;p&gt;And I think it&amp;#x27;s highly naive, this distinction between private companies as greedy, interested parties and government agencies and functionaries as objective arbiters of truth and goodwill. Either way you have ridiculous salaries, internal power struggles, marketing&amp;#x2F;perception, budget committees, and cynical people inured to the hard realities of the lives they affect.</text></item><item><author>northwest</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood how prisons could be allowed to become private businesses. It&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; by definition.</text></item><item><author>adamnemecek</author><text>In the future, there will be a more extreme version of rickrolling. People will send you links and if you open them, you will be sent to jail.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zeidrich</author><text>A prison is a place where people are deprived of liberties.  A society can justify depriving people of liberties. A private interest should not have the right to do so.&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;#x27;s not the private interest who condemns the prisoner, but they run these facilities at a profit, turning what should be a rehabilitating environment into an environment that is designed to promote full prisons to enrich an individual.&lt;p&gt;A good prison should work at a financial loss because there should be a societal benefit to rehabilitating inmates.  If a higher prison population turns into a financial incentive, there is no incentive to help inmates or even reduce recidivism.&lt;p&gt;This is especially true when you consider how many minor offenses can send people to jail in the US. It is also interesting to consider that when slavery was abolished, many plantations turned into for-profit prisons; or that the incarceration rate of the US is the highest in the world.</text></comment>
<story><title>SOPA died in 2012, but Obama administration wants to revive part of it</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/sopa-died-in-2012-but-obama-administration-wants-to-revive-part-of-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Prophasi</author><text>By definition? That requires some justification.&lt;p&gt;The justice system still sets the parameters and manages the procedures by which sentences are handed down. If a court determines you&amp;#x27;re going to prison for 10 years, you&amp;#x27;re going -- the private company manages your environment for that time.&lt;p&gt;And given that private parties also manage your medical care, hospital stays, air travel, car manufacture, work environments, home building, and thousands of other mechanisms and environments that determine your safety and quality of living, I struggle with finding a moral difference when it comes to prisons.&lt;p&gt;You could argue that these other things are voluntary and prison isn&amp;#x27;t, but it&amp;#x27;s involuntary even if run by government; most inmates would opt out either way.&lt;p&gt;And I think it&amp;#x27;s highly naive, this distinction between private companies as greedy, interested parties and government agencies and functionaries as objective arbiters of truth and goodwill. Either way you have ridiculous salaries, internal power struggles, marketing&amp;#x2F;perception, budget committees, and cynical people inured to the hard realities of the lives they affect.</text></item><item><author>northwest</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood how prisons could be allowed to become private businesses. It&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; by definition.</text></item><item><author>adamnemecek</author><text>In the future, there will be a more extreme version of rickrolling. People will send you links and if you open them, you will be sent to jail.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pilif</author><text>It starts to become a problem when judges and district attorneys own shares of the companies that run the prisons. This creates a clear conflict of interest  (the more people they can convict, the more money they will make) which so far doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be noticed as you read about such circumstances at times.</text></comment>