January 17, 2010
Opinion: “Privatizing prisons a bad idea”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a big splash Jan. 6 by proposing a constitutional amendment to guarantee a bigger budget for higher public education in California each year than for the state's scandal-ridden prisons. Celebration in University Hall, gnashing of teeth by the prison guards union. What's wrong with that?
It's hard to disagree with a policy of beefing up public universities as an investment in California's future, the way we did in the good old days — rather than starving them into privatization as at present. Never mind how that promise can be carried out in the face of another $20 billion this year in cuts to essential public services statewide.
But the little-remarked, yet outlandish, truly scary part of the governor's plan was what came next: in order to make the prisons more cost-effective, he asserted, we should create a system of competition between public and privately operated prisons, because "competition and choice are always good."…
LINK - SantaCruzSentinel.com
