> It's not like we pay the police $2,000 for each arrest
Not in a direct sense - but civil asset forfeiture and arrest/citation quotas do incentivize individual officers to take actions that benefit their department's budget and their annual review, respectively.
> It's not like we [...] pay the prison $500/night per inmate
In the case of private prisons (which house 8% of the US prison population[0]), a per-prisoner stipend is the most popular[1] business model.
The government quite literally pays the prison company a fixed dollar amount per inmate-night, which the company then turns a profit on.
Not in a direct sense - but civil asset forfeiture and arrest/citation quotas do incentivize individual officers to take actions that benefit their department's budget and their annual review, respectively.
> It's not like we [...] pay the prison $500/night per inmate
In the case of private prisons (which house 8% of the US prison population[0]), a per-prisoner stipend is the most popular[1] business model.
The government quite literally pays the prison company a fixed dollar amount per inmate-night, which the company then turns a profit on.
[0]: https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/comparing_correc...
[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062215/busin...