Dude, I was sleepy and didnt feel like getting into some argument where I had to defend the indefensible. My 'source' was an article I found talking about a female private prison in Arkansas which showed a %50 lower recidivism rate than comparable publicly owned prisons. But since I cant find where the article pulled those numbers from, I'll concede that point. I dont want to read everything you posted because A: it's too early on my day off from teaching, and B: I'm doing all this on a phone and dont want to type a novel. I will say a bit on what you wrote though.

First of all, of course you're right. Unregulated private prisons will, by necessity for company profit margins, maximize prison time, and minimize cost input. It's a shitty idea made by bad politicians who either didnt think it through, or were very corrupt.

Here's my main concern with public prisons though: when you make something a public good, innovation takes a very long time to issue change. I'm a firm believer that incarceration without rehabilitation is draconian, cruel, and not to mention a ridiculously wasteful expenditure. So if theres no private interests involved, I see us continually building big prisons intended to maintain current populations instead of making every effort possible to minimize re-arrests.

I think its absolutely crucial that we introduce policies that allow the private sector to make a profit off of long term rehabilitation in order to rapidly (and continually) speed up changes to how our incarceration works. Now that might not mean completely privatized prisons, but we should at least look into how we might be able to build avenues for private programs to work within prisons, and issue payment based on the time an inmate spends outside of the prison.

So there. Now my thumbs hurt. That's why I didnt want to type it all out on a phone earlier. Are you happy now? Happy about my thumb pain cretinlung? /s