Jailing
Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial
Complex
April
10, 2012
By John W.
Whitehead
“Mass
incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human
history is a fundamental fact of our country
today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the
fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more
black men in the grip of the criminal-justice
system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were
in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people
under ‘correctional supervision’ in America—more than
six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under
Stalin at its height.”—Adam Gopnik, “The Caging of
America”
In
an age when freedom is fast becoming the exception
rather than the rule, imprisoning Americans in private
prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash
cow for big business. At one time, the American penal
system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals
needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect
society. Today, as states attempt to save money by
outsourcing prisons to private corporations, the flawed
yet retributive American “system of justice” is being
replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of
mass punishment based upon profit and expediency.
As
author Adam Gopnik reports for the New
Yorker:
[A]
growing number of American prisons are now contracted
out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies.
The companies are paid by the state, and their profit
depends on spending as little as possible on the
prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any
greater disconnect between public good and private
profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in
the obvious social good of having the minimum
necessary number of inmates but in having as many as
possible, housed as cheaply as
possible.
Consider
this: despite the fact that violent crime in America has
been on the decline, the nation’s incarceration rate has
tripled since 1980. Approximately 13 million people are
introduced to American jails in any given year.
Incredibly, more than six million people are under
“correctional supervision” in America, meaning that one
in fifty Americans are working their way through the
prison system, either as inmates, or while on parole or
probation. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
the majority of those being held in federal prisons are
convicted of drug offenses—namely, marijuana. Presently,
one out of every 100 Americans is serving time behind
bars.
Little
wonder, then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet
while providing security, housing, food, medical care,
etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for
cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations such
as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the
leaders in the partnership corrections industry, it’s a
$70 billion gold mine. Thus, with an eye toward
increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal
to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and
manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to
the states. In exchange, and here’s the kicker, the
prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and
states would have agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate
in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
The
problem with this scenario, as Roger Werholtz, former
Kansas secretary of corrections, recognizes is that
while states may be tempted by the quick infusion of
cash, they “would be obligated to maintain these
(occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied
to make sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent
to drive up the population.” Unfortunately, that’s
exactly what has happened. Among the laws aimed at
increasing the prison population and growing the profit
margins of special interest corporations like CCA are
three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25 years to
life for multiple felony convictions) and
“truth-in-sentencing” legislation (mandating that those
sentenced to prison serve most or all of their
time).
And
yes, in case you were wondering, part of the investment
pitch for CCA and its cohort GEO Group include the
profits to be made in building “kindler, gentler”
minimum-security facilities designed for detaining
illegal immigrants, especially low-risk detainees like
women and children. With immigration a persistent
problem in the southwestern states, especially, and more
than 250 such detention centers going up across the
country, there is indeed money to be made. For example,
GEO’s new facility in Karnes County, Texas, boasts a
“608-bed facility still smelling of fresh paint and new
carpet stretch[ing] across a 29-acre swath of farmland
in rural South Texas.
Rather than prison cells,
jumpsuits, and barbed wire fencing, detainees here will
sleep in eight-bed dormitory-style quarters, wearing
more cozy attire like jeans and T-shirts. The facility's
high walls enclose lush green courtyards with volleyball
courts, an AstroTurfed soccer field, and basketball
hoops, where detainees are free to roam throughout the
day.” All of this, of course, comes at taxpayer
expense.
“And
this is where it gets creepy,” observes reporter Joe
Weisenthal for Business Insider, “because as an
investor you’re pulling for scenarios where more people
are put in jail.” In making its pitch to potential
investors, CCA points out that private prisons comprise
a unique, recession-resistant investment opportunity,
with more than 90% of the market up for grabs, little
competition, high recidivism among prisoners, and the
potential for “accelerated growth in inmate populations
following the recession.” In other words, caging humans
for profit is a sure bet, because the U.S. population is
growing dramatically and the prison population will grow
proportionally as well, and more prisoners equal more
profits.
In
this way, under the pretext of being tough on crime,
state governments can fatten their coffers and fill the
jail cells of their corporate benefactors. However,
while a flourishing privatized prison system is a
financial windfall for corporate investors, it bodes ill
for any measures aimed at reforming prisoners and
reducing crime. CCA understands this. As it has warned
investors, efforts to decriminalize certain activities,
such as drug use (principally possession of marijuana),
could cut into their profits. So too would measures
aimed at reducing the prison system’s disproportionately
racist impact on minorities, given that the
incarceration rate for blacks is seven times that of
whites. Immigrants are also heavily impacted, with
roughly 2.5 million people having been through the
immigration detention system since 2003. As private
prisons begin to dominate, the many troubling
characteristics of our so-called criminal justice system
today—racism, economic inequality, inadequate access to
legal representation, lack of due process, etc.—will
only become more acute.
Doubtless,
a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably
become more corrupt, as well. For example, consider the
“kids for cash” scandal which rocked Luzerne County,
Penn., in 2009. For ten years, the Mid Atlantic Youth
Service Corporation, which specializes in private
prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail
youths and send them to private prison facilities. The
judges, who made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more
than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent
many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing
DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings.
When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was
sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received
28 years, but not before thousands of young lives had
been ruined.
In
this way, minor criminals, from drug users to petty
thieves, are being handed over to corporations for
lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect
society or prevent recidivism. This is the culmination
of an inverted justice system which has come to
characterize the United States, a justice system based
upon increasing the power and wealth of the
corporate-state.
No
matter what the politicians or corporate heads might
say, prison privatization is neither fiscally
responsible nor in keeping with principles of justice.
It simply encourages incarceration for the sake of
profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of
them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to
corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do
nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. This
perverse notion of how prisons should be run, that they
should be full at all times, and full of minor
criminals, is evil.
WC:
1332
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