Far more than 8% of inmates live subhumanly because public prisons are awful too. Focusing on private prisons distracts us from how much of the problem is systemic and political—cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency, being "tough on crime" and pure historical momentum. It's not a "follow the money" problem, it's a "politicians and voters" problem.
> cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency
And you would instead promote.. what? 'Rehabilition'? These arguments always show an absurd amount of empathy for the criminal, and little-to-none for the victims and (statistically extremely likely) future victims.
There is a large number of people that simply cannot function in society. If they aren't violent, cool: I have no problem with anyone living how they like. If they are violent, then they need to be removed from potential victims.
While there is some proportion of people that simply cannot function in society, the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.
That's a common retort, and it's complete nonsense.
> the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.
This does not track. People like to point to Norway as a model for rehabilition and low incarceration rates, while completely ignoring the fact that their crime rate is one of the lowest on the planet.
So, yes, if your crime rate (and anti-sociality) is near zero, I would expect the incarceration rate to be much lower, as well.
I did not mention Norway, or low crime countries, because the same applies for literally every country in the world.
Out of large countries except USA the ones with the highest incarceration rate are Brazil, Turkey and Russia, which definitely do not have "crime rate (and anti-sociality) near zero" but have literally twice as few per capita incarcerated people than USA, and all the moderate-but-still-high-crime countries like Morocco or Mexico or Malaysia have three times smaller incarceration rates than USA.
Unless you can make a good argument why USA has a twice larger proportion of people that simply cannot function in society than the abovementioned countries, I'll repeat my assertion that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.
