The Incentives Are Wrong

The Department Of Justice has decided to cancel the Obama era plan to phase out private prisons.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era memo to phase out the use of private prisons, signalling his support for federal use of such facilities and advising that the Bureau of Prisons will “return to its previous approach to the use of private prisons.”

Sessions issued a new memo Thursday replacing one issued last August by Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time, in which he said the Obama decision “impaired” the ability to meet the needs of the correctional system.

Well, let us see what some commenters at that site had to say about the action.

Ignatius

Privatized prisons = perverse incentive

F**k you, Sessions.

And

Akzed

Moral hazard: govt’s default position.

And

Sanity Bear

A profit motive for imprisonment is one of the more perverse features of modern America.

And then the conversation turned to Drug Law.

BarkingCat

Any law that prohibits narcotics is unconstitutional.

At least when the politicians wanted to mame alcohol illegal they went about it correctly and actually changed the constitution using the amendment process.

Yes, prohibition was idiotic. It has caused lots of damage as well as death.

Those politicians concluded that they made a mistake and went through the constitutional amendment process again and corrected the problem they created.

Cannot say the same about any politicians that came after them. Too stupid to even learn from recent history.

Now you would think that those politicians taking an oath to defend the Constitution would take that oath seriously. You would be wrong.

More.

Abaco

This asshole pretends to support the constitution. There has never been an amendment giving the feds authority to prohibit drugs of any kind other than the 18th to prohibit alcohol. He can’t pretend igornace of that very plain and simple fact.

Now all that Drug talk was initiated by a mention of a Spicer press conference where he said the government will be going after recreational pot. Eric is covering that in more depth. So I will leave that to him.

So are these perverse incentives real or just something in the fevered imaginations of the crazies? They are real (how wide spread is not certain). I’m sure you want some proof. I have it. Kids for cash.

The “kids for cash” scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were convicted of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit youth centers for the detention of juveniles, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of residents in the centers.

Just lovely. And then there is this anecdotal evidence posted in 2015 at Russia Today.

The title of the piece is: Private prisons bribe judges to jail more inmates – ex-prison guard speaks out

Incarceration, for some, is a pure tragedy; for others, a burden on taxpayers’ wallets. And yet, there are those who make billions of dollars from the grim industry of private prisons. The US government praises them as a way to ease expenditure, a blessing for the community and inmates – but is that really so? Reports have been describing incompetence, corruption and abuse rife in such privately-owned facilities. To find out what the state of affairs is in such prisons, we decided to ask the man who saw it all with his own eyes – from inside the belly of the beast. Paul Reynolds, former corrections officer at the privately owned Lake Erie prison, is on Sophie&Co.

There is video at the site if you want more detail.

And then there is Two-Thirds of Private Prison Contracts Include “Lockup Quotas”. No perverse incentives there eh?

And finally we come to the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. An Amendment our head of the DoJ is not fond of. At all.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

If only we had a champion whose policy was to reign in the Federal Government. Wouldn’t it be wonderful? We may have such a champion. But he has appointed Jeff Sessions who is not such a champion. At least not in his current position. Read about it at: Jeff Sessions and the Thuggery of Asset Forfeiture.

Today’s example is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. When he was Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, he was an ally in the fight against big government. He favored decentralization. He supported rolling back the welfare state. He favored entitlement reform. He supported tax cuts. He used his power and position to try to do the right thing. But when Trump asked Sessions to join his cabinet, it wasn’t to head the Office of Management and Budget, a position that would have been a good fit. Instead, Trump picked him to be Attorney General, which is problematical because Sessions is an advocate of the failed War on Drugs. And he’s also a supporter of “asset forfeiture,” which occurs when governments steal money and property from citizens without convicting them of any crime. Or sometimes without even charging them with a crime.

You can read more about our new Attorney General at Trump’s Pick For Attorney General A Big Fan Of Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Well Jeff, what about the Constitution which you swore to uphold? Or do you side with our socialist “living document” friends these days? I must say that I never cared much for socialism since I grew up. Neither the Republican nor the Democrat versions. I did have more hope for Republicans. But that is all it was. A hope. Because Republicans, like Democrats, will ignore the law when it gets in the way of something they want to accomplish.