what if i told you that the United
States has the highest number of slaves
in the developed world and it’s
completely legal it’s true the 13th
amendment the United States Constitution
explicitly states neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude except as a
punishment for crime shall exist within
the United States this one small
addendum allows for the existence of a
billion-dollar prison labor market where
prisoners are forcibly employed for less
than a dollar an hour in every industry
from construction and manufacturing to
telecommunications and the system was
constitutionally upheld so it’s not
going away anytime soon but i’m not here
to argue the ethics of slavery with you
i understand most people have strong
opinions about that what i am here to
tell you about is an excellent business
model when the prison population
increases private prisons paid for
government contracts to build prisons
and house prisoners when they win they
use the profits from their contracts as
well as from the prisoners labor to hire
lobbyists to encourage tough on crime
legislation this increases the prison
population again this process is known
as a revolving door of the American
prison system but I think that’s a bit
of a misnomer after all we’re not the
only country that does this five other
industrial and post-industrial nations
also use prisoners for slave labor they
are the United Kingdom China Japan New
Zealand and Australia these six
countries also have extremely high
recidivism rates relative to the rest of
the world what is recidivism recidivism
can be defined as the rear s
reconviction or re-incarceration of a
criminal after a previous arrest
conviction or incarceration for the
purposes of my research I looked at real
incarceration rates because prisoners
can’t be used for slave labor unless
they are unless they are currently
incarcerated with this definition of
mine I went ahead to my first research
question do the efforts of the
for-profit prison industry directly lead
to an increase in reincarnation of
prisoners additionally what other
factors what other factors would allow
for-profit prisons to flourish and
encourage high every incarceration the
first thing I wanted to look at was the
difference between law enforcement sin
my countries may be having a large law
enforcement body relative to the rest of
the population ensures that the vast
majority of recidivist criminals are
caught tried and convicted correctly so
I looked at the number of
just police officers and prosecutors
compared to the general population but
it looks like size really doesn’t matter
so instead I tried looking at their
productivity how do you measure the
productivity of law enforcement what I
used was number of suspects per police
officer and number of convictions /
prosecutor the more important of these
two measures is number of convictions
for prosecutor because convictions
represent the final good produced by our
legal system everything leading up to
that included suspecting of a criminal
by police officer and then prosecuting
by the prosecution would be intermediate
goods used to produce this final
supposedly correct conviction but it
looks like the vigilance of law
enforcement doesn’t have any impact on
recidivism so I thought what if it’s a
difference between the criminals
themselves after all not all crimes had
the same recidivism rate property crimes
like theft and burglary have recidivism
rates over seventy percent whereas
violent crimes like homicide and sexual
assault have recidivism rates under
three percent so maybe a country that
has a large number of property criminals
relative to violent criminals would also
have a high recidivism rate despite the
fact that they’re experiencing less
severe crime but neither the type of
crime being committed nor the total
amount of crime being committed could
actually tell us anything about
recidivism there could still be one
other important difference between the
criminals in these countries though one
other fact I looked at was the
prevalence of organized crime organized
criminals represent a special type of
professional criminals it is their job
and primary source of income to commit
crimes so although and in additionally
in order to be part of a criminal
organization these criminals would need
some past experience and skills
committing crimes in order to be an
asset although not one hundred percent
of these criminals are caught and tried
repeatedly they should still be
considered recidivist criminals because
they are constantly reoffending in order
to generate income but how do you
measure organized crime obviously you
can’t do it directly but van de extry
search on organized crime indicators
gave us a good base to go off of he used
several proxy variables but the most
important of them was number of unsolved
homicides typically there are two types
of homicide the cold-blooded killing is
committed by criminal organizations
where the relationship between
perpetrator and victim is not well known
and hot blooded crimes of passion where
the perpetrator and victim knew each
other intimately
and these have a much higher solve right
because it’s much easier to establish
the relationship between perpetrator and
victim so the number of unsolved
homicides in a country actually does
serve as a good proxy for the amount of
organized crime but whether taking day
extry search well they’re taking day x
variables together or independently his
organized crime his composite organized
crime index could not tell us anything
more about recidivism one final fact I
looked at in differences between these
countries is a number of immigrants
immigrants particularly in the United
States are sorry particularly in the
United Kingdom there have been
complaints that immigrants have been
being detained in for-profit facilities
at increased rates relative to the
general population this shouldn’t be
that surprising given the fact that
immigrants typically have fewer rights
and natural born citizens and frequently
don’t speak the native language making
them much easier to hold in these
for-profit facilities for long periods
of time but this problem appears to be
primarily isolated to the United Kingdom
because even countries with relatively
low immigration like New Zealand and
Australia have comparable recidivism
rates countries with extremely high
recidivism like the United States and
United Kingdom one final factor one
final thing before I get to the results
of my study are these special
considerations that I had to take for
China China report said it probably has
the lowest recidivism rate in the world
at about twelve percent this is not only
remarkable given that a typical
recidivism rate in a country that
doesn’t use slave labor is thirty-one
percent it’s actually highly suspicious
given that China’s not known as a global
leader in humanitarian achievement after
doing some digging into the Chinese
prison system i discovered the laogai
lagai means reform through labor and it
was a system of prison camps located
throughout China Harry Wu was Harry was
the founder of the laogai Research
Foundation and he was a former political
prisoner in the Lao guy he was a
prisoner for 19 years under what is
called a jail sentence joa means force
job placement it is an indefinite prison
sentence given to a low guy prisoner at
the end of his court-appointed sentence
on the day the release they’re simply
told that they will be held indefinitely
until they are dead or until they so
choose to release them so although these
criminals are not getting out of prison
where they can reoffend and be
re-incarcerated they are still being
resent instead incarcerated
so if we want to measure the effect that
for-profit prisons have on reincarnation
population relative to its laogai
population service it’s reincarnation
rate again because these criminals are
are being re-incarcerated despite the
fact that they are not reoffending who
estimates that of the 16 to 21 million
log our prisoners about 8 to 10 million
have received a juvie sentence these are
of course estimates as to date the log I
Research Foundation has identified about
1100 of these camps though they believe
there are about 3,000 taking the most
conservative of lose estimates we get
that eight million of the 16 million
laogai prisoners received a jail
sentence giving china re incarceration
rate of fifty percent finally for the
results of my study I found that
for-profit prisons increased criminal
increase tree incarceration by about 14
percentage points although there was
extremely limited limited literature on
the subject I did find one other study
that did something similar Baron Posen
looked at a cohort of Florida juvenile
offenders in four types of prisons three
types were nonprofit and the fourth was
for profit compared to all three kinds
of nonprofit prisons the for-profit
prison / firm dwarfs in terms of
recidivism outcomes additionally the
increase in citizen in recidivism they
found was comparable to my own their
studies actually even more compelling
because they were able to control for a
wide a wide variety of factors about
every single person within their study
they knew their personal history their
criminal background the size and
demographics of the prison facility that
were placed in the crime and recidivism
rate within their family and the crime
and recidivism weight within their
neighborhood so based off of this
extremely detailed data they’re actually
able to come up with a strong model that
would predict recidivism and even after
accounting for all these factors they
still found a substantial increase in
recidivism rates and for-profit prisons
compared to non profit taking all this
information together I have two possible
policy recommendations the first is we
could simply replace all for-profit
prison management with nonprofit
management the second is that we could
try changing the incentive structure at
that private prisons face rather than
funding them based on the number of
people they incarcerate we could fund
them based on the number of prisoners
they rehabilitate thank you [Applause]
States has the highest number of slaves
in the developed world and it’s
completely legal it’s true the 13th
amendment the United States Constitution
explicitly states neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude except as a
punishment for crime shall exist within
the United States this one small
addendum allows for the existence of a
billion-dollar prison labor market where
prisoners are forcibly employed for less
than a dollar an hour in every industry
from construction and manufacturing to
telecommunications and the system was
constitutionally upheld so it’s not
going away anytime soon but i’m not here
to argue the ethics of slavery with you
i understand most people have strong
opinions about that what i am here to
tell you about is an excellent business
model when the prison population
increases private prisons paid for
government contracts to build prisons
and house prisoners when they win they
use the profits from their contracts as
well as from the prisoners labor to hire
lobbyists to encourage tough on crime
legislation this increases the prison
population again this process is known
as a revolving door of the American
prison system but I think that’s a bit
of a misnomer after all we’re not the
only country that does this five other
industrial and post-industrial nations
also use prisoners for slave labor they
are the United Kingdom China Japan New
Zealand and Australia these six
countries also have extremely high
recidivism rates relative to the rest of
the world what is recidivism recidivism
can be defined as the rear s
reconviction or re-incarceration of a
criminal after a previous arrest
conviction or incarceration for the
purposes of my research I looked at real
incarceration rates because prisoners
can’t be used for slave labor unless
they are unless they are currently
incarcerated with this definition of
mine I went ahead to my first research
question do the efforts of the
for-profit prison industry directly lead
to an increase in reincarnation of
prisoners additionally what other
factors what other factors would allow
for-profit prisons to flourish and
encourage high every incarceration the
first thing I wanted to look at was the
difference between law enforcement sin
my countries may be having a large law
enforcement body relative to the rest of
the population ensures that the vast
majority of recidivist criminals are
caught tried and convicted correctly so
I looked at the number of
just police officers and prosecutors
compared to the general population but
it looks like size really doesn’t matter
so instead I tried looking at their
productivity how do you measure the
productivity of law enforcement what I
used was number of suspects per police
officer and number of convictions /
prosecutor the more important of these
two measures is number of convictions
for prosecutor because convictions
represent the final good produced by our
legal system everything leading up to
that included suspecting of a criminal
by police officer and then prosecuting
by the prosecution would be intermediate
goods used to produce this final
supposedly correct conviction but it
looks like the vigilance of law
enforcement doesn’t have any impact on
recidivism so I thought what if it’s a
difference between the criminals
themselves after all not all crimes had
the same recidivism rate property crimes
like theft and burglary have recidivism
rates over seventy percent whereas
violent crimes like homicide and sexual
assault have recidivism rates under
three percent so maybe a country that
has a large number of property criminals
relative to violent criminals would also
have a high recidivism rate despite the
fact that they’re experiencing less
severe crime but neither the type of
crime being committed nor the total
amount of crime being committed could
actually tell us anything about
recidivism there could still be one
other important difference between the
criminals in these countries though one
other fact I looked at was the
prevalence of organized crime organized
criminals represent a special type of
professional criminals it is their job
and primary source of income to commit
crimes so although and in additionally
in order to be part of a criminal
organization these criminals would need
some past experience and skills
committing crimes in order to be an
asset although not one hundred percent
of these criminals are caught and tried
repeatedly they should still be
considered recidivist criminals because
they are constantly reoffending in order
to generate income but how do you
measure organized crime obviously you
can’t do it directly but van de extry
search on organized crime indicators
gave us a good base to go off of he used
several proxy variables but the most
important of them was number of unsolved
homicides typically there are two types
of homicide the cold-blooded killing is
committed by criminal organizations
where the relationship between
perpetrator and victim is not well known
and hot blooded crimes of passion where
the perpetrator and victim knew each
other intimately
and these have a much higher solve right
because it’s much easier to establish
the relationship between perpetrator and
victim so the number of unsolved
homicides in a country actually does
serve as a good proxy for the amount of
organized crime but whether taking day
extry search well they’re taking day x
variables together or independently his
organized crime his composite organized
crime index could not tell us anything
more about recidivism one final fact I
looked at in differences between these
countries is a number of immigrants
immigrants particularly in the United
States are sorry particularly in the
United Kingdom there have been
complaints that immigrants have been
being detained in for-profit facilities
at increased rates relative to the
general population this shouldn’t be
that surprising given the fact that
immigrants typically have fewer rights
and natural born citizens and frequently
don’t speak the native language making
them much easier to hold in these
for-profit facilities for long periods
of time but this problem appears to be
primarily isolated to the United Kingdom
because even countries with relatively
low immigration like New Zealand and
Australia have comparable recidivism
rates countries with extremely high
recidivism like the United States and
United Kingdom one final factor one
final thing before I get to the results
of my study are these special
considerations that I had to take for
China China report said it probably has
the lowest recidivism rate in the world
at about twelve percent this is not only
remarkable given that a typical
recidivism rate in a country that
doesn’t use slave labor is thirty-one
percent it’s actually highly suspicious
given that China’s not known as a global
leader in humanitarian achievement after
doing some digging into the Chinese
prison system i discovered the laogai
lagai means reform through labor and it
was a system of prison camps located
throughout China Harry Wu was Harry was
the founder of the laogai Research
Foundation and he was a former political
prisoner in the Lao guy he was a
prisoner for 19 years under what is
called a jail sentence joa means force
job placement it is an indefinite prison
sentence given to a low guy prisoner at
the end of his court-appointed sentence
on the day the release they’re simply
told that they will be held indefinitely
until they are dead or until they so
choose to release them so although these
criminals are not getting out of prison
where they can reoffend and be
re-incarcerated they are still being
resent instead incarcerated
so if we want to measure the effect that
for-profit prisons have on reincarnation
population relative to its laogai
population service it’s reincarnation
rate again because these criminals are
are being re-incarcerated despite the
fact that they are not reoffending who
estimates that of the 16 to 21 million
log our prisoners about 8 to 10 million
have received a juvie sentence these are
of course estimates as to date the log I
Research Foundation has identified about
1100 of these camps though they believe
there are about 3,000 taking the most
conservative of lose estimates we get
that eight million of the 16 million
laogai prisoners received a jail
sentence giving china re incarceration
rate of fifty percent finally for the
results of my study I found that
for-profit prisons increased criminal
increase tree incarceration by about 14
percentage points although there was
extremely limited limited literature on
the subject I did find one other study
that did something similar Baron Posen
looked at a cohort of Florida juvenile
offenders in four types of prisons three
types were nonprofit and the fourth was
for profit compared to all three kinds
of nonprofit prisons the for-profit
prison / firm dwarfs in terms of
recidivism outcomes additionally the
increase in citizen in recidivism they
found was comparable to my own their
studies actually even more compelling
because they were able to control for a
wide a wide variety of factors about
every single person within their study
they knew their personal history their
criminal background the size and
demographics of the prison facility that
were placed in the crime and recidivism
rate within their family and the crime
and recidivism weight within their
neighborhood so based off of this
extremely detailed data they’re actually
able to come up with a strong model that
would predict recidivism and even after
accounting for all these factors they
still found a substantial increase in
recidivism rates and for-profit prisons
compared to non profit taking all this
information together I have two possible
policy recommendations the first is we
could simply replace all for-profit
prison management with nonprofit
management the second is that we could
try changing the incentive structure at
that private prisons face rather than
funding them based on the number of
people they incarcerate we could fund
them based on the number of prisoners
they rehabilitate thank you [Applause]
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