That doesn’t seem like a good system. The bidding process and the actualisation of losses (tied to real social interests) keep the prisons in check.
I strongly disagree. Additional checks and balances that prevent serious problems occurring are good. You have already said your system could go wrong (you said “more realistic assumptions might show my proposed system is fundamentally mistaken”) and maybe it could go wrong in subtle ways that take years to manifest as companies learn how they can twist the rules.
You should be in favour of checks and balances, and might want to explore what additional systems of checks would work best for your proposal. Options include: A few prisons running on a different system (eg state-run). A regulator for your auction based prisons. Transparency. The prisons being on 10 year loans from the state with contacts the need regular renewing so they would default to state ownership. Human rights laws. Etc. Maybe all of the above are things to have.
As an example, one thing that could go wrong (although it looks like you have touched on this elsewhere in the comments) is prisons may not have a strong incentive to care about the welfare of the prisoners whilst they are in the prison.
Ah yes, I have mentioned in other comments about regulation keeping private prisons in check too. I should have restated it here. I am in favour of checks and balances, which is why my goal for the system contains ”...within the limits of the law”. I agree with almost everything you say here (I’d keep some public prisons until confident that the market is mature enough to handle all cases better than the public system, but I wouldn’t implement your 10-year loan).
Human rights laws. Etc.
Yep, I’m all for that. One thing that people are missing is that the goal of a system kind of… “compresses” the space of things you want to happen. That compression is lossy. You want that goal to lose as few things as possible, but you will lose some things. To fix that, you will need some regulation to make sure the system works in the important edge cases.
prisons may not have a strong incentive to care about the welfare of the prisoners whilst they are in the prison
This is incorrect. They do have a strong incentive, since the contract comes into effect immediately after the auction: If a crime happens in their prison, the prison has to pay the government. The resulting problem is that prisons have an incentive to hide these crimes. So I recommended that prisons be outfitted with cameras and microphones that are externally audited.
I strongly disagree. Additional checks and balances that prevent serious problems occurring are good. You have already said your system could go wrong (you said “more realistic assumptions might show my proposed system is fundamentally mistaken”) and maybe it could go wrong in subtle ways that take years to manifest as companies learn how they can twist the rules.
You should be in favour of checks and balances, and might want to explore what additional systems of checks would work best for your proposal. Options include: A few prisons running on a different system (eg state-run). A regulator for your auction based prisons. Transparency. The prisons being on 10 year loans from the state with contacts the need regular renewing so they would default to state ownership. Human rights laws. Etc. Maybe all of the above are things to have.
As an example, one thing that could go wrong (although it looks like you have touched on this elsewhere in the comments) is prisons may not have a strong incentive to care about the welfare of the prisoners whilst they are in the prison.
Ah yes, I have mentioned in other comments about regulation keeping private prisons in check too. I should have restated it here. I am in favour of checks and balances, which is why my goal for the system contains ”...within the limits of the law”. I agree with almost everything you say here (I’d keep some public prisons until confident that the market is mature enough to handle all cases better than the public system, but I wouldn’t implement your 10-year loan).
Yep, I’m all for that. One thing that people are missing is that the goal of a system kind of… “compresses” the space of things you want to happen. That compression is lossy. You want that goal to lose as few things as possible, but you will lose some things. To fix that, you will need some regulation to make sure the system works in the important edge cases.
This is incorrect. They do have a strong incentive, since the contract comes into effect immediately after the auction: If a crime happens in their prison, the prison has to pay the government. The resulting problem is that prisons have an incentive to hide these crimes. So I recommended that prisons be outfitted with cameras and microphones that are externally audited.