I watched some of this for the first time last night. Pretty interesting stuff. They were running a documentary on the privatization of prisons, and how the states are washing their hands of any standards of management while the private companies are subcontracting out the labor to other entities. The inmates are charged for their stay in the private facilities, and if they fail to pay, they are re-incarcerated for failure to pay the fines. There's a vicious cycle to keep people in the system for corporate profit.

Pretty interesting... anyone else watch FSTV?

The only vicious cycle that keeps people in or going back to prison is their behavior.

Ordinarily I would agree, but what about the many instances where these inmates make one misdemeanor mistake and are forced to re-enter the system over and over because they cannot financially pay the debt to the private company?

Is this not in effect, a debtor's prison? Once they pay their initial debt to society, how can it be justified to keep them coming back on a civil matter?

The only problem with FSTV is they end up with a lot of leftist/collectivist idiots on there.  There is a core of good freedom/liberty stuff, if you can sit through some of the most god-awful anti-capitalist bullshit you have ever heard.  

We need liberTV, or maybe in addition to the NRA, the NFA--National Freedom Association, that is!  

BTW--private prisons are just fine if oversight is good.  Our whole nation is a prison-state though, with too many people in jail and prison for ridiculously minor offenses.  Lock up the murderers and the rapists and the real crooks, leave the druggies and the non-violent people out.  It's an industry all of its own--ever been to Pennsylvania aka "the prison state?"