Someone argued that private prisons have an incentive to enslave people and that it would be bad for there to be private prisons under anarcho-capitalism
Others have argued that private prisons would be rarer and crime might be more in fines or other ways of making restitution rather than prison times
What problems exist with the idea of private prisons and what solutions do you suggest to these objections?
Currently the private prison system is so in bed with the state, it's hard to really call it private. I think for private prison to really work, it needs to be linked to private justice. If your judge works for a justice company, and that company is going to have to pay a pretty penny to incarcerate somebody, then there will exist an extremely strong incentive to not over punish, while at the same time, if they don't punish enough, people won't subscribe to them.
I don't think prisons would be practical in a stateless society. You really want to pay $500 a month to get back at some guy who stole your car? Or would you rather just have him give you the car back and pay some compensation?
Or let's say someone murdered your spouse. You want to pay money for the rest of his life to get back at him? More likely, you want compensation.
I think Friedmans conception of how security firms could replace the current justice system is the most realistic.
What if they pay for their own imprisonment
That would be tough because you would have to keep them productive which isn't imprisonment anymore, that's just slavery or indentured servitude.
And again, according to Friedmans conception in Machinery of Freedom, people would most likely choose security firms that don't practice imprisonment or slavery.
I fully agree with Hubbard here, prisons are a VERY ineffective and unfair method of handling criminal activity. They are 100% a product of statism and actually breed crime rather than stop it.
Under an ideal AnCap paradigm you can't enslave someone against their will. People only go to a prison of their choice as part of an agreement to fulfil a contract as a condition to be allowed back into polite society. (living in some territory, or doing business with certain groups, whoever have come up with such a pact)
Of course we can argue whether that's realistic, and what would constitute unlawful imprisonment under the NAP vs. what would be enforceable, but no government is perfect. (I say government because IMO AnCap is still a loosely governed form of state without the trappings of a state.)
Since most people don't like prison, you're correct that fines and other restitution would be more common.
We really don't know how well private prisons would or wouldn't work, because we don't have any fully private prisons. They are all incentivized or regulated by the state. Maybe there are some historical examples.
I guess, but I also think it's possible most people in society will agree that prison is a justified punishment for certain crimes and hence most people will consent to this being the punishment (at least temporarily). I could envision our current system becoming ancap and basically they keep prison sentences that most people consent to because it's just how crime is dealt with somewhat effectively right now.
I made a post calling it an "UnState" I think. To me it's basically a State, just not centralized (a "decentralized State"?). Anyway, I much think I agree with you here on this, regardless of what words we use to describe it, it's a kind of government but not.
Most of the future models I've seen, someone who did a serious crime would essentially be declared an outlaw and excluded for whatever allied turf the victims lived in. They(their families, tribe, insurer) would have to either pay the "blood price" as compensation to regain access to be in that region, or face summary execution by whatever people/machinery were doing security.
I think BadQuaker.com had some podcasts going into restorative justice and all that vs the modern nation state system of warehousing people until they turned 35-40+ and the testosterone settled down and their brain cells started working again. Although, when you warehouse someone with a bunch of cons for a number of years, or even months, a lot of stupid anti-social behaviors get pretty well cemented in.
The restorative justice systems, which are growing fewer and fewer, but still have some presence in different Muslim controlled regions, tend to do more to address victims compensation. This keeps the family/tribe of the victims from wanting to hunt them down and kill them, in theory.
In a more established nation/state where you have pretty much all people in relation to a real or imagined state entity, all crimes are against the state, the state mediates all justice, all fines are paid to the state, the welfare of the general public, and victims derives from the state, so any meager compensation(usually nothing) would come from them.
Which ends up being abused, because the state entity doesn't really care about the welfare of the people. 3-4 people get murdered, ok, lock the guy up 10 years, let him out on parole down the road, and see if he can go back to being at least a low level production worker. The victims family, oh well, they can apply for welfare, cash in their insurance, whatever.
A vandal sets fire to an entire parking ramp full of cars, in a restorative justice system that little shit would be mining heavy metals in some slave pit until the day he died if his family/tribe couldn't compensate the victims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer
http://www.restorativeschoolstoolkit.org/sites/default/files/Practicing%20Restorative%20Justice%20in%20School%20Communities%20the%20Challenge%20of%20Culture%20Change.pdf
Most of the old podcasts on this stuff that I remember have faded from the internet along with their creators. Oh well, so it goes.
Prisons are a problem and I don't think they would exist in a stateless society