[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
The latest issue (21.2) of the Journal of Libertarian Studies features James R. Edwards on the advantages of private charity over government welfare; Brian Smith on the implications of Tocqueville’s ideas for the prospects of free-market anarchy in a democratic culture; Raymond J. Krohn on the contrast between the genuine libertarianism of Lysander Spooner and the pseudo-libertarianism of the Jacksonian Democrats; Laurence Vance on the federalist case for the Kelo decision; David Gold on the origins of laissez-faire constitutionalism in resistance to pro-business legislation; Dan D’Amico on Alex Tabarrok’s anthology on private prisons; and Norbert Lennartz on Michael van Notten’s and Spencer MacCallum’s defense of Somali customary law.
Read a fuller summary of 21.2’s contents here.
Read summaries of previous issues under my editorship here.
Read back issues online here.
Subscribe here.
I doubt many on the left are going to be impressed with what is essentially a ringing endorsement by Tabarrok of CCA and similar organizations. Sometimes I can’t tell what they hate most about private prisons, the fact that they’re prisons or the fact that they’re private.
Given that most libertarians favor a justice system based on monetary restitution over punishment, I don’t see what role prisons would play. I honestly hope there isn’t one.
Given that most libertarians favor a justice system based on monetary restitution over punishment, I don’t see how prisons would fit into that scenario. I honestly hope they wouldn’t at all.
A system of monetary restitution does not have to exclude prisons. Debtors prisons are perfectly compatible with it.
Well, then again you have to consider who’s paying to keep that person incarcerated. Historically, debtors prisons have been a public institution, with the costs externalized onto the whole of society through taxes. I doubt victims would want someone incarcerated If they had to bear the full costs themselves. It just creates more of a loss for them. I’d rather the criminal be free and working, so that they can continue paying restitution on the installment plan.
Debtors prisons are perfectly compatible with it.
They already tried those in Industrial-Era England. People today tend to put them in the same category as forced child labor and chattel slavery.
Given that most libertarians favor a justice system based on monetary restitution over punishment, I don’t see how prisons would fit into that scenario.
An intelligent leftist would just respond that free-market capitalism won’t be workable without at least 2%+ unemployment, prisons, and other “social control” methods to keep the working-class in line, so the need for prisons will be inevitable.
I’d say the implications of the mainstream private prison debate put together with the implications of the radical implications of anarcho-capitalist theory are as follows:
1) Contracting out to private companies for the provision of prison services has increased the technological efficiency — more incarceration at current techniques for a lower cost.
2) From Benson’s and other libertarian’s perspectives it is important to question whether this technological efficiency is also an economic efficiency or consequence. Whose interests is it within to increase the efficiency of current incarceration techniques? The states?
3) There is an obvious relationship between the provision of incarceration and the entire spectrum of criminal justice. Legislators, police, courts, and correctional facilities are all inked through the socialized centralization. A free market alternative of one institution without the others does not guarantee a coordination between the people’s preferences for justice on the one hand and the practical administration of justice on the other hand.
4) It requires great imaginative creativity to conceptualize functioning anarcho-capitalist alternatives to current criminal justice systems. A totally free-market provision of law and order would require the privatization of all the separate institutions of justice simultaneously. Under such circumstances it seems most likely that incarceration would be far less used than today, but that is not to say it would be obsolete.
Under such circumstances it seems most likely that incarceration would be far less used than today, but that is not to say it would be obsolete.
Thanks for your comments D’Amico. The frustrating thing about debating it with lefties is that they think the opposite will result… so there’s not exactly much common ground.
Anon2,
I think order of operations matters here, which is exactly the point that Benson is trying to bring up in his chapter. If the state controls the law and we privatize the prison system, then we get a really convenient and efficient way to enforce state-law — more people in prison.
If we have private law and private prisons together then we have to ask what is the likely content of that law, and how many violators are we likely to have? Given that anarcho capitalists are typically against the criminalization of drugs and the fact that the rise of prisoners in America is mostly the result of drugs being illegal, I think it’s really hard to deny that a free market society would incarcerate fewer people.
The problem is really getting on a common ground as to what the free market society actually looks like. On this point, I think that the so-called prison privatization debate has done more harm to the term “priavtization” than good.
A general point: under market anarchy we could expect to see fewer victimless-crime laws anyway, simply because those who favour such laws would have to bear the expense of enforcing them, rather than socialising the cost as they can now. The fervent fanatics might be willing to pay extra premiums for that purpose, but the average consumer wouldn’t.
…and, of course, prosecuting a victimless crime would be a crime, with a victim.