I love it when profits get into the picture; privatization “always makes the industry more efficient.” Of course, there’s the nagging issue of how efficiency is quantified, and whether or not it’s desirable to achieve efficiency. In this case, the more bodies you lock up, the higher the profits, which is exactly what should happen if you’re in the business of making your prisons function as well as possible…

…except it’s not good for society to require so much capacity, and it’s not actually sustainable to grow a prison industry indefinitely. Eventually, you run out of people to put in jail… so now it’s not about profits, it’s about avoiding losses. Ah, the joys of inappropriate privatization.

RTFA: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?…

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

RTFA: http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/open_for_question…

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” S. Man, Denton

A: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.

Booooo!

Terrible show. This question was far and away the most supported question submitted to change.gov, and it received the least substantive response from Obama. A little explanation would have been nice.

Granted, there are all sorts of political reasons to dodge the question, but it’s really disappointing that we can’t have a reasoned discussion about this topic. At least provide a reason why legalization isn’t supported. Did he miss the part about creating jobs and boosting the economy?

Oh – I forgot the part about the prison industry being a growth sector of the economy… woo-freaking-hoo… That will create useful jobs!

Anyway, with an attitude like that, it sounds like we’re up for more of the same… which amounts to little more than authoritarian thuggery.

As someone pointed out on reddit, Dr. Ron “The Last American” Paul has a few choice positions on the topic:

Paul favors the use of marijuana as a medical option. He was cosponsor of H.R. 2592, the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act.[225][226] He opposes federal prohibition of this option in states such as California under Proposition 215.

Paul has joined prominent liberal Democrats in urging that states be allowed to permit farmers to grow industrial hemp, which currently is defined as a controlled substance.[211] He contends that this would help North Dakota and other agriculture states, where farmers have requested the ability to farm hemp for years.[211]

In 2005 and 2007 he introduced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act “to amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana, and for other purposes”[227]; it currently has eleven cosponsors. This bill would give the states the power to regulate farming of hemp. The measure would be a first since the national prohibition of industrial hemp farming in the United States. The Economist wrote that his support for hemp farming could appeal to farmers in Iowa.[228]

Pretty sad, really…