<story><title>NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2023/01/23/nyc-jail-rikers-mail-surveillance-securus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Rebelgecko</author><text>Even though I&amp;#x27;m not a fan of private prisons, I wonder what would happen if they had a contract that gave bonuses for every year a former inmate stayed out of jail? Maybe that&amp;#x27;s already been tried.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives.&lt;p&gt;The goal given to them is &amp;quot;house this person securely for a specific length of time &lt;i&gt;at the lowest cost possible&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;. They are rewarded for cutting costs.&lt;p&gt;But the total cost &lt;i&gt;we&lt;/i&gt; pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It&amp;#x27;s the policing costs when they&amp;#x27;re homeless because they can&amp;#x27;t find housing or get a job. It&amp;#x27;s the health care costs they can never pay for when all of the above inevitably leads to further problems.&lt;p&gt;To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons to actually rehabilitate.&lt;p&gt;But we won&amp;#x27;t, because our society is largely based on Calvinist nonsense that says there are &amp;quot;bad people&amp;quot; and we should celebrate those people having bad things happen to them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aqme28</author><text>Suddenly prisons are trying to incarcerate the factually innocent, since they&amp;#x27;re the least likely to &amp;quot;re-offend.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>NYC jails want to ban physical mail, then privatize scanning of digital versions</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2023/01/23/nyc-jail-rikers-mail-surveillance-securus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Rebelgecko</author><text>Even though I&amp;#x27;m not a fan of private prisons, I wonder what would happen if they had a contract that gave bonuses for every year a former inmate stayed out of jail? Maybe that&amp;#x27;s already been tried.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>I feel like the prison system is the victim of perverse incentives.&lt;p&gt;The goal given to them is &amp;quot;house this person securely for a specific length of time &lt;i&gt;at the lowest cost possible&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;. They are rewarded for cutting costs.&lt;p&gt;But the total cost &lt;i&gt;we&lt;/i&gt; pay is the cost to imprison this person the second and third time when they re-offend. It&amp;#x27;s the policing costs when they&amp;#x27;re homeless because they can&amp;#x27;t find housing or get a job. It&amp;#x27;s the health care costs they can never pay for when all of the above inevitably leads to further problems.&lt;p&gt;To reduce the lifetime cost of this person on society (financially and otherwise) we should be incentivising prisons to actually rehabilitate.&lt;p&gt;But we won&amp;#x27;t, because our society is largely based on Calvinist nonsense that says there are &amp;quot;bad people&amp;quot; and we should celebrate those people having bad things happen to them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeffwask</author><text>The problem is more insidious, their incentives are to keep them incarcerated, not retrain them in any meaningful way, and hope they repeat.</text></comment>