Incarceration rates aren't pertinent here.
They indeed are pertinent here. On the one hand, you say that only a small number of prisoners are being housed in for-profit prisons, yet on the other hand you downplay the significance of how many people are actually caught up in the criminal justice system. A basic understanding of math would demonstrate how you present two conflicting views.
92% of prison inmates aren't housed in private prisons. 100% of jailed convicts aren't housed in private prisons.
I'll let you do your own research on how for-profit prisons are currently one of the fastest growing industries on wall street. You like wikipedia quite a bit, so maybe you can do some digging and see how it's not only designated for-profit prisons benefiting from such high incarceration rates. Honestly, how else can you explain the US's prison industrial complex? Do you really believe people here are just inherently bad? That makes absolutely no sense.
As a "PhD student studying this very topic at an Ivy League institution" you should know better than to make the sweeping claim that US prisoners are shipped off to private prisons with any conflict of interest.
I didn't make a 'sweeping claim.' I made a claim that's based in fact and very relevant. Did I go into great detail, no. Primarily because I didn't feel like spending my entire day debating the topic on social media.
Not even killing a half dozen people in cold blood and attempting to murder several more? Tell you what, you can go ahead and raise your family next door to a guy like Hernandez. I, for one, will lose no sleep over locking everyone like him up and throwing away the keys.
The case in Scandinavia will stand. He will spend his whole life in prison. A monster out of a political ideology. I'm not so sure there's anyway to change him and make him productive again. Hernandez, on the other hand, I followed the case closely and can't even fathom how he was charged with murder. Much of the jury must have felt the same way given it took them so long to deliberate. All prison-length debate aside, it's like you pretend the jury took 20 minutes to come to a decision.