Even "public" prisons devour tax dollars to pay prison staff (who are unionized in some states with lobbies that fight for stricter laws and law enforcement and thus more prisoners to guard...), construction workers, suppliers of food, surveillance equipment, and so on. "For profit" prisons are just the logical conclusion of a rotten industry.
Public choice theory seems interesting, I guess I have something else to read about tomorrow.
I probably agree with your comment about unions, but that's a much broader statement than I was shooting for. I specifically think that the prison and anti-drug lobbies are vile, because they use their power to create and increase enforcement of laws[1] that enslave arguably innocent people (drug users and people that fell afoul of three strikes laws), purely for the benefit of their members. It's not just unions siphoning off tax dollars here, it's perpetuating war ("the war on drugs") against the US citizenry (and unwittingly or not giving power to organized crime, and causing worldwide violence and unrest, etc. etc. you've heard this story before).
I bring up construction workers etc. because it's not hard to imagine a web connecting the companies that build the prisons to the police chiefs mandating arrest quotas to the "tough on crime" politicians and so on, along with their pocketbooks.
