Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits over the last decade. Why has this happened? The answer highlights a profound flaw in how decisions too often get made in our legal system: for-profit jail telecom companies realized that they could earn more profit from phone and video calls if jails eliminated free in-person visits for families. So the companies offered sheriffs and county jails across the country a deal: if you eliminate family visits, we’ll give you a cut of the increased profits from the larger number of calls. This led to a wave across the country, as local jails sought to supplement their budgets with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from some of the poorest families in our society.
The fact that the author, despite them providing all of this evidence to the contrary, still thinks (or is at least reporting) that this is a bug, not a feature, is absolutely enraging.
So you’re anti-reform? What? Are we going back to stoning people to death in your Utopia? I’m missing something about this conversation.
EDIT: Don’t just downvote, explain it to me. If the entire justice system is harmful then what is your alternative?
They’re saying the people in charge don’t see this as a bug, but as a feature. Just like saving money by removing rehabilitation programs and getting more money when the recidivism rate goes up.
Idk about that take, the phone companies and wardens aren’t really “the people in charge” so much as they saw where laws didn’t exist and moved to profit off of it.
The comment pretty clearly and aggressively says that we should all assume the justice system is inherently corrupt. I think that’s pretty shortsighted and doesn’t leave any means of improvement. We should treat these bugs as flaws, and we should deal with each one individually with political action. Notably, simply removing the private prisons ability to lobby would probably do the trick, as well as supporting lawmakers who want to ban them including Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden (in fact Biden has already banned federal private prisons, but much with any other executive order it’s been challenged in courts).
Also, again, if it cannot be fixed then what is the alternative to the justice system?
Most of the prison industrial complex is actually service and goods suppliers. Then there’s the companies using prison labor. And then at the end a few percentage points account for private prisons.
And the system is inherently corrupt. Every time we successfully assert a right they find a way to negate it.
Police need probable cause? Nope. As long as they believe they’re acting in good faith the evidence is admissible.
When you get to court you get a lawyer? Well maybe. Is your crime eligible for more than one year in prison? No? Haha no lawyer for you.
Okay but at least there’s bail so you can set up your life to not fall apart if you’re convicted and spend a few months behind bars? Nope. You can’t afford bail. Nevermind that means you can’t afford to be flight risk, you get to stay in jail until you confess, or your trial ends.
Okay okay, but surely they can’t keep you in jail for longer than the sentence you would get? They can and they have.
The prosecutor changed your charges because you wouldn’t take a plea deal, but at least now you get a lawyer! Your public defender is too busy to come visit you. They can only talk over the phone and they warn you the call is recorded and everything you say can be used against you in court. Their only advice is to bargain with the prosecutor. They explain they couldn’t even begin to make an effective defense because whatever you tell them will get selectively played in court.
You take the deal, it seems like the only way out of the nightmare. You get home on time served and you find a bill waiting for you. The state is charging you for room, board, court room, and the lawyer. If you don’t pay you’ll be held in contempt and returned to jail. You lost your job while you were in jail and you have a letter threatening eviction from your land lord.
This has all happened to people. And when Chicago still couldn’t get enough, they operated an honest to God black site at Homan Square.
First of all, even if you think 8% of inmates in private prisons is only “a few percentage points”, about 3/4ths of all migrant detention in the USA is private prison industry, private prisons cost more per prisoner housing and also result in more violent outbreaks and assaults which lead to additional costs, and they’re also the major groups lobbying for control of prison supply chains, prisoner labour, harsher sentencing, etc. They are not a negligible part of the overall problem.
Second, what is your alternative to a prison system? Is it fixing the flaws, public stoning, what? You say that the vague concept of a Justice System is inherently corrupt, I’ve been asking in every single comment what the alternative is?
Comprehensive reform. Without writing a book that’s really all there is to it. Accountability for abuses, strict oversight, public education about how you actually lower recidivism, run goods and services like the military (through a single purchasing authority), and on and on.
The most important thing is to unpack the supreme court. They’ve approved most of the stuff on that list.
If it can be reformed with legislative actions then it’s not inherently corrupt. Maybe it’s just a use of language that’s causing the disconnect for me here. Shaka when the Walls Fell.
It’s still going to be the Justice System after comprehensive reform.
What’s your argument exactly? That it’s not inherently corrupt because we’d be in a big hard-to-solve problem if it’s inherently corrupt, and therefore we must agree that’s it’s not inherently corrupt?
Well that’s the thing. We’ve done legislative action and the people running the prisons, police, and courts seem to just find a different way to keep doing the same thing. At what point do we create a new system that blacklists everyone in the current system? At what point do we shut down a system that’s doing more harm than good for everything by the most egregious crimes?
That’s a strange definition of inherently corrupt. Maybe a better term would be corrupt by design. If it were redesigned from the ground up, starting with Constitutional reform and then legislation, it could be more like the prison systems of more civilized countries, but a large portion of the public does not want that. While there are reform activists on the left, treating prisoners worse than animals is largely a matter of consensus within the political establishment.