Prez candidate Bernie Sanders: "We Must End For-Profit Prisons"

As noted in this prior post, last week Senator (and Presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders announced his commitment to ending use of private prison in the United States. This week he has followed up by authoring this Huffington Post commentary under the headline "We Must End For-Profit Prisons." Here are excerpts taken from the start and end of the piece along with its major headings in-between:  

The United States is experiencing a major human tragedy. We have more people in jail than any other country on earth, including Communist China, an authoritarian country four times our size. The U.S. has less than five percent of the world's population, yet we incarcerate about a quarter of its prisoners -- some 2.2 million people.

There are many ways that we must go forward to address this tragedy. One of them is to end the existence of the private for-profit prison industry which now makes millions from the incarceration of Americans. These private prisons interfere with the administration of justice. And they're driving inmate populations skyward by corrupting the political process.

No one, in my view, should be allowed to profit from putting more people behind bars -- whether they're inmates in jail or immigrants held in detention centers. In fact, I believe that private prisons shouldn't be allowed to exist at all, which is why I've introduced legislation to eliminate them.

Here's why:

For-profit prisons harm minorities....

For-profit prisons abuse prisoners....

For-profit prisons victimize immigrants....

For-profit prisons profit from abuse and mistreatment....

Prison industry money is corrupting the political process....

For-profit prisons are influencing prison policy ......

... and immigration policy....

For-profit companies exploit prison families....

Young people are being mistreated and exploited....

I have introduced legislation that will put an end to for-profit prisons. My legislation will bar federal, state, and local governments from contracting with private companies to manage prisons, jails, or detention facilities. Regulators will be directed to prevent companies from charging unreasonable fees for services like banking and telecommunications.

My legislation also takes steps to reduce our bloated inmate population. It reinstates the federal parole system, which was abolished in the 1980s, so that officials can individually assess each prisoner's risk and chance for rehabilitation. It ends the immigrant detention quota, which requires officials to hold a minimum of 34,000 people captive at any given time. And it would end the detention of immigrant families, many of whom are currently held in privately-owned facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania.

It's wrong to profit from the imprisonment of human beings and the suffering of their friends and families. It's time to end this morally repugnant practice, and along with it, the era of mass incarceration.

I have long tended to have an agnotic view of the private prison industry, in part because I generally tend to favor free-market solutions to big problems and in part because I view the public prison industry to be chock full the big problems stressed by Sanders in this commentary.  Nevertheless, Sanders makes a strong case that private prisons exacerbate public harms in incarceration nation.  Moreover, it is now quite interesting and important that a significant rival to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President is now making prison reform a big priority on the campaign trail.

Some prior related posts:

• What does new Prez candidate Bernie Sanders have to say about criminal justice reform?
• "Bernie Sanders Announces Bill to Abolish Private Prisons, Hints at Marijuana Policy Platform" 
• Prez Candidate Bernie Sanders announces plan to restore federal parole and eliminate private prisons