Donald Trump has ushered in a "golden age of private prisons"

I’m with you. I’m of the view the free market can make damned near anything cheaper and more commoditized, which in lots of fields is a great and wonderful thing. But you have to agree that you want more of it, so much more of it you don’t mind the downsides of a surplus (e.g., computing power, Old Navy jeans, etc.), there are a few things (e.g., the Fire Department, or the Police Department and, certainly here, prison capacity) where a big surplus isn’t desirable and so I want the private sector to take no part of it. Cheaper prisons is NOT a desirable outcome when the government is just a contractor for them because the an overcapacity in prisons won’t drive down the government incarceration budget. Cheaper prisons (assuming, arguendo, that they’re cheaper) only means more folks go to prison.

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