The questions that must be asked: Is this a deliberate move on the part of the Harper Conservatives? Is the Harper government attempting to create a condition, in a manner similar to Gordon Campbell's treatment of BC Rail, that will make his move towards private, for-profit prisons a reality in Canada, as it has become elsewhere? Canada's prisons are overcrowded, yet Harper has vowed to "get tough on crime", which means yet more fodder for the penal system. And at the same time, an increasing number of "residents" haven't yet been charged, residing as they do in pre-trial facilities, waiting for a clogged court system to hear them. One answer is to speed up the justice system, something magistrates seem unwilling to do (a form of income security, I suppose). Suggestions have been made, for instance, to open up night courts, and to have magistrates and prosecuting attourneys work in shifts. Another is to remove some present crimes from the books - such as marijuana use. Both however, seems to be anathema to this federal government.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/opinion/3593976/Private-prisons-lock-up-profits-but-society-pays-price
Excerpts from Private Prisons:
You can't blame capitalists for wanting in on this......The criminal justice system is a textbook example of the laws of supply and demand in action. Our socio-economic model produces a steady flow of offenders requiring processing and containing. Our political system ensures a bi-partisan consensus that law and order can be maintained only by increasingly punitive sentences, which effectively makes locking people up a growth industry.
And since prison fails to rehabilitate or reduce recidivism, customer loyalty isn't much of a problem. Perhaps it's to be expected – having stripped the land......we're down to convicts as a primary resource. It's a bit like the government's other economic innovation, mining national parks, only this time we're drilling for nuggets of social dysfunction.
The only business I can think of with a more perfect market dynamic is the mortality industry. As the baby boom slowly turned into the wrinkly boom, retirement village developers and corporate death companies began capitalising on the inevitable outcome, building care facilities, buying up funeral parlours, centralising mortuary services and generally reaping the profits of the Grim Reaper's handiwork. Prisons aren't quite as gold-plated an investment, but a similar calculus applies.
On the other hand, commercial incarceration enjoys certain advantages genuine private enterprises don't. You can call them "private" prisons, but that's a bit of a technicality, given that the state still picks up the tab. A private contractor is the direct beneficiary, not only of full public subsidisation, but also of the policies driving "clients" through its triple-locked doors. It's a form of social waste management, if you like, with the main risk to private "providers" being that a competitor might undercut them.
Stumble It!