It seems to us that certain things should be obvious to rational thinking human beings. One such thing is that the business of administering criminal sentences should never be that – a business.
A necessary component of living in organized communities is the need for basic order and that need inevitably requires the administration of some punishment or correction. This is serious stuff. It requires a sophisticated blend of punishment or deterrence, restitution, and mercy – and it needs to be done in a cost effective manner. There is something fundamentally corrupt, even evil in creating a system where this corrective function is not driven by justice and the pursuit of the greater good but is instead driven by the pursuit of money.
Certain governmental functions such as the administration of criminal sentences should be performed exclusively by those whose only goal is the proper and efficient administration of sentences imposed by the courts rather than the pursuit of profits which often come at the expense of the most unfortunate and impoverished members of our communities.
In 2014, the American bar association (“ABA”) published an article on this disturbing trend (http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/probationers_prison_privatized_supervision_becomes_a_spiral_of_added_fees_j) and on Monday August 8, 2016, the ABA’s House Delegates passed a resolution condemning the use of for-profit, privatized probation companies. We salute the ABA and strongly support Resolution 111B.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/abolish_private_for-profit_probation_that_puts_offenders_deep_in_debt_house/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email
