• We are now running on a new, and hopefully much-improved, server. In addition we are also on new forum software. Any move entails a lot of technical details and I suspect we will encounter a few issues as the new server goes live. Please be patient with us. It will be worth it! :) Please help by posting all issues here.
  • The forum will be down for about an hour this weekend for maintenance. I apologize for the inconvenience.
  • If you are having trouble seeing the forum then you may need to clear your browser's DNS cache. Click here for instructions on how to do that
  • Please review the Forum Rules frequently as we are constantly trying to improve the forum for our members and visitors.

Private police Dept????

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
imported post

40s-and-wfan wrote:
As for your original comment in the paragraph I quoted above regarding wasting tax-payer money on these prisons, don't worry about that. The prison in Hardin, Montana is a privately owned prison. The prison in Shelby, Montana is also a privately owned prison. No tax-payer money is wasted that way. If you own the prison, my money isn't being wasted. I don't know how a private company can waste tax-payer money like that.
There are several examples of criminals from one state being housed in an institution in another state. If one state doesn't have room at their crowbar hotels, they can and sometimes do contract with other states to house the more serious offenders.
I've heard this before. The part I have a hard time understanding is as follows:

Please explain to me where the money comes from to fund private prisons. Prisons generally cost money, they do not make it. Do you really expect me to believe these privately owned prisons turn a profit producing license plates?

If so, I would argue that function should still be performed by government. Overseeing criminal justice is one of the few valid functions of government. If justice can be run as a for-profit business, then why should that business not be owned by the people so that the tax burden necessary to support penal justice may be reduced?

Edit: Gosh darn it, I just triple-posted again. Apologies all. Please see my posts at the end of the previous page.
 

40s-and-wfan

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2009
Messages
490
Location
Lake County, Montana, USA
imported post

Well, there you have it. That shows your experience with people there versus my experience with people here! We have just the same problems here in Montana that you have in California, just on a smaller scale. I've never seen a white-collar criminal growing meth. That's a blue and/or no-collar crime for the most part. We have every drug imaginable here in Montana, just like you have there. We have every type of lifestyle here too.
Most of the people here that deal in drugs have some kind of a history because of the crappy economy here and they do whatever they can to protect their assets. Lots of people who come into this state from another state bring the mentality of their state to ours and we don't like it. Therefore, as I'm not sure if you know, not many of us here in our fair state like Californians. We don't like the big-city attitude here in small-town, rural areas.

By the way, not all the violent weed-growers are part of Mexican cartels, nor are they always Latinos. To be honest, I take offense to you thinking just because they grow weed, they're involved with anything to do with the whole Mexican heritage. As a Latin male in Montana, I take offense to this stereotypical attitude. That, in my attitude, actually shows your ignorance regarding Latino's as a whole! Please don't make that mistake again. I take it as racial discrimination and don't appreciate that kind of attitude!!

We don't have any Mexican cartels up here but we have some violent weed growers nonetheless!!
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
imported post

I don't associate weed-growing with being Mexican. If you had read that article to which I linked, you would not have come to that incorrect conclusion.

The reality is that, here in California, most of the violent weed-growers are the Mexican cartels. So, that reference was simply intended as an illustration, not an attempt to link violent weed production with Latino ancestry.

I do not believe drug production causes behavior, nor do I believe ancestry causes behavior. Therefore, it is improbable that I believe that some specific combination of drug production and ancestry is any more likely to necessarily entail violence than the existence of either factor independent of the other. ;)

I did not even intend to imply that all *violent* weed-growers are Mexican or Latino. It's simply that the cartels are the pre-eminent example of such here in California.

Notice I said that mom-and-pop growers were "generally" nonviolent. This usage suggests room for there being violent growers not in the "Mexican cartel" category. :p

As for non-cartel-affiliated weed growers in Montana, if they are violent their violence gives you more than enough cause to arrest them. It doesn't change the fact that incarcerating a person *solely* for growing marijuana is a waste of taxpayer dollars, as that is no kind of guarantee that person will be violent.

As for the overcrowded prisons, while I'm sure that you feel the majority of people you saw incarcerated were violent offenders whether or not they were actually convicted for such an offense, remember that a fair number of nonviolent offenders are convicted as well, although they occupy far less of the actual arresting officers time (and, thus, attention) due to their relative ease in being dealt with.

Enough nonviolent offenders are imprisoned to significantly increase the tax burden. I suggest that it is a big part of our *growing* prison population.

I maintain that, as with dealers, you come into contact with violent growers more frequently -- and they occupy more of your attention -- and as a result they are more "visible". I myself have known enough completely passive, nonviolent drug producers to be totally unconvinced in there being anything other than a statistical correlation between drug production and violence, the same way you (and I) recognize that there is nothing more than a statistical correlation between violent drug producers and Mexican cartels. In the same way that being a violent drug producer does not predict Latino heritage, being a drug producer does not predict violent behavior. ;) Although there may be found correlations between the two things in certain circumstances.

As for meth, it does have something of a "street drug" connotation, with good reason. However, I would point out that the doctors and pharmacists who prescribe and distribute legal methamphetamine -- the same active ingredient in "crystal meth" can be had legally in medical amphetamines -- are neither "blue-collar" not generally violent.

The prohibition itself is what creates the correlation between violence and drug use/dealing. This itself is enough reason to advocate for its end.

Any instance where drug producers defend their product with violence is not an indicator of a direct causal relationship between drug production and violence, it is rather an indication of a causal relationship between prohibition and the propagation of violent business techniques.

It's just a bonus that we'll save a few dollars by not incarcerating a few innocents.

Pharmacists are nonviolent, but gangsters are not. Liquor stores are nonviolent, but bootleggers were not. This does suggest a causal relationship, but that relationship is between the prohibition and the violence.

Edit: Out of curiosity, could you respond to my question regarding the source of income for privately owned jails and prisons, if you can?
 

JBinMontana

Regular Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2008
Messages
260
Location
Kalispell, Montana, USA
imported post

At any rate marshaulit seems that you have moved this topic to your own, and away from what was really the topic here.

My friend that you think you need to argue with, is more on spot about what happens here in Montana than you know. Montana and California are so far apart, that you do not understand what goes on here in Montana. I used to live across the bay from SF, and know first hand what that state needs.

On the other hand I won't agrue with you any further, as a very smart man once told me, to not argue with stupid people, as they will only beat you with experience.
 

marshaul

Campaign Veteran
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
11,188
Location
Fairfax County, Virginia
imported post

If the validity of a position does not become clear in open debate, but must be declared by those who support it, it must be a weak position indeed.

Declaring your opposition "stupid" does not make it so, and it only further underlines the lack of ability to defend your position.

This forum is filled with posts that go miles off-topic. Only when a discussion results in something other than masturbatory, back-slapping lockstep is it all of a sudden "not worth" arguing with "stupid" opponents.

Your insults, as they so frequently will, speak more about you and your lack of ability to defend your position than they ever will about me.

Incidentally, I would still like an explanation for how privately owned jails or prisons magically operate at a true profit (i.e. create value) rather than depending upon taxpayer dollars. If they are able to run making a legitimate profit, you'd think at least one of you would take the time to provide some evidence.
 

IDAHO COWBOY

Regular Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2009
Messages
298
Location
, ,
imported post

Hardin more or less a dead issue.

The best ways to fix the jail problems Nation wide is hanging by the neck until dead or firing squad on the court house square in full public view leaving their dead hanging or lying for a week within 7 days after capture or conviction - all drug dealers, rapists, murders, cartheft, livestock theft, robbery, burgarly, stalkers,illegals, govt servants elected or appointed or hired whom fail to uphold the their sworn oath "toprotect and defend the U.S Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic"

The biggest issue for now in Montana is the Senator Baucus on the Second Amendment, Health Care, etc and Senator Tester is close on Baucus heels.

Although Tester recently jumped on the bandwagon to support the Second Amendment, maybe he has seen error of hisways by supporting Baucus in the past.
 

40s-and-wfan

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2009
Messages
490
Location
Lake County, Montana, USA
imported post

Can't wait to see the show Pot City USA on A&E tomorrow night. As usual, it will more than likely confirm what I was saying in this thread earlier about how violent people like that are and about how they deserve to be behind bars!
 
Top