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You sir, are on the ball.
Here is some reading on the subject. Of course, if the market is going to take over incarceration, why not have it take over law enforcement and the administration of justice as well?
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These are all really really bad ideas...Why do so many people have such a boner for the "free" market now anyway?
Free markets do NOT increase effeciency and reduce costs in many sectors of human interaction. Many prison functions now are outsourced to private firms with dismal results...
See, the problem with using markets with prisons is with whom are they competeing? for whose benefit? who gets the service? And what happens is, since it is the prisoners who are being fed and receiving the medical treatment, and, since they're prisoners, they have no say whether or not their treatment is satisfactory, can do nothing, and therefore have no recourse. Why feed them a full three meals a day when 2 or 1 will do? Does anyone on the outside really care if people are straved and/or not treated for sickness? Why even treat anyone? The privitazation of the health care in prisons is the primary reason that the Hepatitis epidemic is so out of control in prisons.
Remeber, the reason why competition works to increase efficiency is that the groups in competition compete to trade their good or service for the customer's money. Such is not the case in prison (they compete for public money and provide a service to prisoners), or most things where there is some sort of public good or public interest. The opposite happens, they comepte hard for money to run a prison, and do everything they can not to run it.
Privitzation is a big problem, also, with the caring for mentally/physically unfit people. Accros the country states have been closing their state hospitals and giving their patients over to the private sector... well, it usually cost more, while, the employees are not trained properly, and the service costs many people that which remains of their health.
And Law Enforcement privitized? are you mad? I hope you're joking. If Law enforcement were privately run you would have even more disparity between the justice dished out to different economic classes and different races. The phrase "Equal Protection Under the Law" would be nothing but a farce, instead of just largely one.