Columbia becomes the first US university to divest from private prison companies
Is there any reason to believe that <i>private</i> prisons are significantly worse than publicly run prisons?<p>I agree that the U.S. is badly in need of major reforms in its criminal justice system, but is there any reason to believe that society is better off with exclusively publicly run prisons?<p>Private prisons may do some regrettable lobbying on behalf of longer prison sentences, but I'm pretty sure that the corrections officers unions (most of whose membership works in publicly run prisons) is a far stronger political force.<p>It seems as though the students' activist energy would have been better used fighting the policies of mass incarceration rather than the private companies who do the government's bidding in applying them.