Michigan Votes Forum

With prison privatization, the supplier's incentive will be to maximize revenue by increasing prison population any way it can.  With government operation, the incentive will be to minimize cost by better management of prison population from sentencing to release.  In the end, privatization will disincentivize rehabilitation and early release saving nothing for the tax payer and doing more harm to the prisoner and the public.  Do not privatize the prison system.  

 Bill 877 and related bills pose a moral conumdrum.  While it may not be cruel, it certainly could be unusual to allow private enterprize to profit off of someone's punishment.  Does a prisoner's knowledge that someone is profiting off of their incarceration cause mental agony, i.e. torture?  Get ready for the appeals and add them to the expence.  However, if freedom of enterprize trumps the Eighth Amendment, this bill will afford Michigan the opportunity to be a model to other states.  Just think!  Capital punishment states could adopt the "Michigan Model" and allow private enterprize to carry out executions AND Michigan's for-profit-penal-system companies could expand into these out of state business opportunities.  It seems to be a matter of degree:  incarceration takes away a part of someone's life while execution takes it all away.Situation ethics?  Like imprisonment, there seems to be no way out of this.....

 The people in the area of the Northlake facility badly need the jobs re-opening the prison would create. To the guards in the union: We can't all work for the state. Look at it this way, good jobs are needed in the private sector so the rest of us can pay our taxes and you can keep your high wages. It's not like every Michigan prisoner is going to eventually be in a private prison. The sky isn't falling, Chicken Little!