If you ask me, the vast system of privatized prisons in this country is one of the things we'll look back on and say "WTF?"

It's 100% expediency. Our local county jail was built for 200 inmates around 1980, and for most of the 80s housed 25% state prisoners by contract -- all non-violent offenders, naturally. After capacity was doubled (by getting approval to put double the prisoners in, and not by anything else!) we took prisoners from the next state over, too. Eventually our own criminals took up all the room and we had to quit doing that.

But you had to figure, even then, that a good fraction of inmates sent to "prison" were actually sent to a crappy (even if modern) county facility halfway across the state or farther. Somehow this never gets into TV depictions.

Ironically, even though it barely defrayed construction costs for us as a county, it seems to be profitable to build these minimum security prisons and then, well, attract inmates. The reason they need to be volunteers is that being sent out-of-state can be classified as "cruel and unusual punishment", which is unconstitutional.

"It all boils down to a change of pace."

Holy shit.

Give it about three or four decades, and they'll be producing videos to convince inmates -- and members of America's newly redundant working classes, not that there'll be much of a difference at that point -- to head to the lunar colonies.