Late last night I was reading Lexington Green go on about prison reform and he was right in that it really is a scandal how brutal, dangerous, and inhumane we've made all too many prisons especially with prison rape run rampant. In one of those moments of "AHA!" a new twist came to me, marry the long Catholic tradition of odd moneymaking enterprises (there's a monastery selling ink cartridges in the US) with the new US idea of prison privatization. Voila, a Catholic run prison.
Yes, yes, after you've gotten all the jokes out of your system, think about it seriously for a bit. If Catholic prisons would replicate the success of Catholic hospitals and schools, what secular reason would there be to keep them out of a privatization auction if a monastery or diocese wanted to make a bid? The prisoners themselves could get instant transfers out of the prison and threaten the income stream if they were forcibly proselytized, the ACLU would see to that. So beyond that theoretical problem, what would be the objection?
Posted by TMLutas at December 12, 2004 09:27 AM