Comment by mckn1ght

It starts to make more sense when you look at the 13th amendment:

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Private prisons are in the business of cheap labor, not rehabilitation. It would be extremely expensive to effectively change the lifestyles of millions of people and treat their addiction, not to mention those around them who become traumatized due to their mistakes and follow in their footprints.

We simply lack the necessary amount of political will to do an end run around this by decriminalizing harmful drugs and providing safer pathways of use that can lead to treatment for addiction. Partially because, again, cheap labor! But no doubt also due to moral puritanism.

I’m happy to see there is some movement in state constitutions to do away with this kind of punishment, and even house/senate resolutions proposed to amend the federal constitution, although I don’t know what’s become of that effort.