WASHINGTON STATE LEGISLATURE MAY PROHIBIT STATE FROM CONTRACTING WITH PRIVATE COMPANIES TO RUN PRISONS: Such companies are the bête noir of many Progressives, including some members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. When we did our (badly researched) report on immigration detention centers back in 2015, our then-Chairmen wrote a fevered Statement: “The ‘incarceration industrial complex’ has extended its tentacles from running traditional prisons on a for-profit basis, to their new growth market—immigration detention.” “Jailing people for profit is obscene,” he wrote.

In Part B of my Commissioner Statement to that report, I respond to the arguments against privately prisons and immigration, noting, among other things, that prison and detention center employees, whether they work for the government or a private company, “profit” from jailing people. There’s no way around that.

The truth is that private companies do as least as good a job as the government at running these facilities and usually better. Unsurprisingly, therefore, prison guard unions are their fiercest opponents.

It’s true that correctional companies have an incentive to lobby for high incarceration rates. But so do prison guard unions. You don’t cut down on that by getting rid of private correctional companies. Indeed, it may be just the opposite.