Re: You know your prison population is too high...
Yeah, public prisons can lose money year after year and never think twice about it.
Something like 8 percent of all state and federal prisoners nationwide are held in private prisons. I doubt this is a primary driver for imprisonment rates.
"The private prison industry are the ones who lobbied and got the three strikes law in place."
Not really true. The major push for "Three Strikes" in California was the CCPOA, the prison guards union. This union is one of the largest abusers of state funds here. Private prisons typically do not employ union labor, and the CCPOA is strongly against private prisons.