First decision is Grants Pass. Gorsuch has the 6-3 opinion finding that the Eighth Amendment does not bar "generally applicable" laws banning public camping. Sotomayor writes the dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...
The Grants Pass law, as Sotomayor made clear in dissent, went further, banning public sleeping with any covering, so much as a blanket, even when no other options are available. This is a very troubling ruling.
This may not be the case for that particular state, but prisons are also notorious for making bank off prisoners by charging them extortionate fees for all their communication needs, because it's not like prisoners have a choice.
They also abolished slavery too. So yeah.
I don’t think “lending workers” is quite the same thing. Since you know job experience is actually pretty important to rehabilitation. And a lot of people would prefer to keep those things.
I'm not going to argue about systems I don't know about. But philosophically, if a for-profit institution gets prison labor by some mechanism at a rate lower than the open labor market, that creates a perverse incentive. No matter how you slice it.
New Zealand’s new right wing austerity minded government is in the process of setting up private prisons in NZ. The “profit institutions” the effort to privatize seems most to benefit are the corporate friends of government ministers.
Not in Grants Pass they won't. When I lived down that way, the Sheriff's Office was practically non-existent because the citizens of Josephine County wouldn't vote for the tax to keep it open.
I’m sure you’re right about the situation in Grants Pass but even if you weren’t my point is there are limits on how much noncompliance even totalitarian autocracies can absorb. I feel like we’re sneaking up on some sort of tipping point.
