Just as Eisenhower's warning of a military-industrial complex being ignored has led to thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars wasted, and now non-stop everlasting wars. The cycle is repeating itself with the prison-industrial complex, these industries become more powerful than our democracy, obtain regulatory capture, and then become such powerful political/lobbying bodies that they literally become unstoppable forces and prevent any type of reform that could be damaging to their bottom line. We are at a critical juncture in this country, if we don't turn back the tide right this instant then it will be too late.
What makes it even worse, is there is already plenty of empirical data, including studies commissioned by the federal government itself, which show the privatization of prisons actually costs more money, while providing nothing in the way of rehabilitation/reform, and providing such sub-human treatment of its prisoners that they contribute to the problem even more than publicly funded prisons(which weren't doing a bang up job of it anyways). But despite this the creep of privatization continues to spread, a sign that the tipping point may have already been reached.
This includes the privatization of probation services, in my home state, the biggest provider of privatized probation, Sentinel, has already been the subject of multiple lawsuits, ranging from its managers opening their own, non certified, DUI schools and referring its probationers to its schools and then violating them when they haven't fulfilled the requirements of their probation(from the schools not being certified) to more recently, in Fulton county(Atlanta), being sued for illegally charging probationers fines which they were not permitted to charge, and the probationers not ordered to pay. This went of for years and years before a savvy probationer realized what was occurring. These bodies have nowhere near the power of the private prison corporations, I just though it was a telling anecdote.
Of course this is the southeast, what makes this more hard to bare, is watching all the liberally minded people around me, and I am sure this happens in red state everywhere turn to some form of libertarianism, because thanks to the GOP, they can't even imagine a world where democracy works and provides good government to its people.
You my friend know how to word the absurdity of this insanity in a way that is easy to understand and sure to get the blood boiling for those on the sidelines too lazy to voice an opinoin.