Private Prisons Aren’t Private

One of the left’s greatest scare-mongering talking points is to say that privatization of X puts profit over the benevolence of the people (who in turn, determine what the government can and cannot do in their utopian fantasies).

An example they will use is “Private Prisons” where a company runs the prison instead of the various governments (local, state, federal) and at a profit.  The line of reasoning is that the contracts will often have a stipulation that the government will guarantee an “occupancy rate” and this in turn, incentivizes the government to imprison more people to line the pockets of these greedy “capitalists”.  As if government doesn’t renege on just about every other contract, social or otherwise, including the constitution and the bill of rights (which they are sworn to uphold).

The point is, “private prisons” are no more “private” than the DMV or the Post Office.  It’s just outsourcing.  So rather than the government stealing money from you and paying for plant, personnel and equipment to run and operate a prison; they pay someone else and “rent” those services from a private company in an egregious example of “cronyism”.

There is nothing related to the free-market at work in this transaction.

For further information regarding “private prisons”, please check out the following article that goes into much deeper detail than my quick rant does:

Don’t Confuse “Private” Prisons with Free-Market Prisons

And the great Tom Woods did a show on this as well!  Check it out here:

The Tom Woods Show on Private Prisons

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