Jindal: Crime can pay for private prison operators

Or to borrow Gill's more clever phrase, "Crime is money"

The deal would liberate about $100 million to ease the pain of the imminent budget cuts, but would then obligate the state to reimburse the new owners for accommodating our less desirable citizens for least 20 years.

It sure doesn't take these fiscal conservatives long to forget about posterity once they get elected. But hypocrisy from the Jindal administration never comes as a surprise. The plan to turn state prisons into private profit centers is hardly conducive to rehabilitation. Everyone knows that, if we ever are to enjoy the social and economic benefits of reduced recidivism, jailbirds need to get off drugs and into education and job training. Prisons run by public employees for the public weal have a powerful incentive to effect that. Where the objective is to make a buck, the idea that inmates might return again and again is by no means distressing.