check out this article: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Crime_pays_fo...s_03092008.html

what do y'all think of private prisons?

I think its a bad idea...very bad.

Already MANY YEARS AGO I saw a documentary on the American Prison system and knew that privatisation (=making short term profit) of it must lead to "more criminals".

With the American Federal Reserve Bank being owned by institutions/corporations whose only interest is taking more money from society, any corruptable institution is in danger. With saying that I'm afraid any corruptable institution already is. With the bad examples from the great US of A we see the followers all over the world. Short term profit rules, no matter the long term consequences will start eating them from the tail.

Just wait untill the privatisation of prisons is in your country and what will you see happening?

The "lower end" of your society will be used as cash material to the service of the (invisible) high end society abusers. Divide and rule.

I think we've already got private prisons here. I don't think America's predilection for the privatization of government services even approaches that of the European Union's. EU directives dictate that if there is a useful government service being provided, it must be privatized or gotten rid of. Unfortunately, this has not had the benefit of reducing the size of government, which continues to grow larger and its functions increasingly irrelevant to the happiness of the people.

That was one of my worries when we lived in the EU: the vast amount of money that goes into the burocracy of the EU, and the way the individual countries strive to maximize their cut of the pie, no matter if it's functional or not. All these burocrats know that the flow of money is secure, so let's spend it. And so do the contracters. It's the same in the EU as in the USA: the big building companies have a strong lobby in politics and they all know that once you've started a big project, there's a point of no return, where you can increase your so called "cost" over budget. Read about it in American history and it's easy to see how the big corporations learn from eachother and repeat the same tricks over and over.

Privatization of public transport: anywhere in the "western" world I see the same schemes: public train transport. How it works:

Public trains transport system was maintained by the government. Government decides to privatize.
The company that buys the train system demands that the whole system is in perfect order before they can accept.
Government puts in several millions to get everything up to date.
Everything ready, and system becomes privatized.
After a few years the public becomes unhappy, because maintenance of the trains and the system is bad.
The new company decides it would be better to shut down the expensive (not profitable) lines.

The government then considers buying it all back...

Guess who is paying the bills?

Is that related to the EU or do you have other ideas?

Like in the States you can be a shareholder of a prison, hence it becomes profitable to have more "criminals". I can't remember I saw something similar in Europe (yet...).

I just have one thing to say...F*ck prisoners, they should all be put on an island and made to fight till the death, mwahahaha. My husband is a correctional officer, he has to deal with these pieces of shit every day, they can rot for all we care. Anyway what is it we were talking about? LOL

Lol, Ladybug. Tell your husband to take care. That's a dangerous job he does.