Comment by lyu07282

The criticism of private prisons (or the prison industrial complex) in general is more than just referring to privately owned and run prisons, its referring to prisons, jails, detention facilities, psychiatric hospitals, private security and guards, transportation and logistics, health care services, surveillance and other technology providers, food/commissary/library services, communication/phone services, cash bail creditors, etc. etc. all run for-profit.

The other issue is more in general about having incarceration rates that are "four to six times that of its high-income peers in Europe and Asia". So you might recognize that as an issue too and think perhaps its the privatized prison system, the root causes for crime like inequality, disenfranchisement, homelessness, the reasons for drug use in the first place, or even just perhaps switching to an evidence-based rehabilitation system.

But now imagine you are a liberal, you need a way to acknowledge and talk about these problems without ever actually having to change anything. So that's why liberal journalists are talking about non-violent drug offenders and the 8.41% private prison population and so Biden stopped the justice department from renewing contracts for federal private prisons and he pardoned all prisoners of federal non-violent marijuana possession charges. Of course it doesn't actually do anything, but that was the point. And that's what liberalism is.