The Prison Industrial Complex Is The Economic Interrelation Between Private Prisons And Various Public

More people have been locked up in the United States than any other country. In the article “Prison Industrial Complex Economics”, it states, “the United States has approximately 6.5 million people under the criminal justice supervision. Incarcerated rate has grown from 176 in 1973 up to 700 in the year of 2000” (Waquant). Incarceration is a big business that feeds into drug violence, corrupted guards, and racism in criminal justice system, taxpayer cost, and racism in the criminal system and through privatization of prisons.

Today, the private prison industry is big and extremely profitable. The industry is dominated by two large companies, Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and the GEO group. The annual combined revenues for both companies amount to over $3 billion while their top executives get compensation of over $3 million each. However, the way these companies operate is wholly unethical.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

The Prison Industrial Complex can be described as a contract or lease from a private corporation that allows them to contract convict labor. The government argues that they are merely converting public tax money when in reality it has only provided profit for private corporations. It serves two purposes. The first is

The criminal justice system focuses more on criminalization and incarceration than it does on rehabilitation. The United States of America wins the award for the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 2.3 million people in correctional facilities. America itself contains only about five percent of the world population, but accounts for twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners (American Civil Liberties Union). With a longstanding history of mass incarceration and

Prisoner outsourcing in the United States is originally attributed to New York’s Newgate Prison in 1802. The prison was able to contract with local manufactures, effectively offsetting rising prison costs. By 1825, prisons throughout the country, including Auburn, Baltimore, Charlestown, and Wethersfield, were realizing profits resulting from “prison contracted labor industries.”

The United States is the largest jailer in the world. With only 5 percent of the world 's population and a disproportionate 20 percent of the worlds prison population the United States also has the highest incarceration rate in the world (Chamman). In fact one in every one hundred and ten adults in the United States will be incarcerated. Many of these adults will return to prison later in their life (ACLU). The Prison Crisis has become a recent phenomenon as from nineteen seventy four to two thousand and fourteen the prison population has increased four hundred and eight percent.

In 2015, America had four times the number of prisoners since 1980, roughly from 500,000 to 2.2 million people. The United States today is five percent of the world population, yet it holds twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the US. Altogether, there is a total of about 6.8 million people under some form of correctional control. If one were to combine the number of people in prison and jail with those who are under parole or probation supervision, it would amount to one in every thirty-five adults, which is 2.8 percent of the correctional control population.

The New Jim Crow introduced the privatization and profitability of prisons as it relates to communities of color. Businesses profit from communities of color in the prison system. The concept of the prison industrial complex was introduced by activists and scholars who believed that the proliferation of prisons and prisoners was more clearly linked to larger economic and political structures and ideologies than to individual criminal conduct and efforts to curb crime (Davis &Shaylor, 2001). Research and data in the area have confirmed this concept. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) provides employers with a tax credit of $2,400 for every work-release inmate they employ as a reward for hiring “risky target groups.” Risky targets groups

There are public service announcements which warn that a DUI will cost you about $10,000. Those costs include fines, court fees, legal fees, jail costs, bail bonds, probation services, etc. Those advertisements subtly illustrate how crime directly benefits the “prison industrial complex.” That term refers to all of the sectors which profit from a massive prison population, including law enforcement, prisons, and the entire legal system. This system employs millions of Americans as police officers, lawyers, judges, paralegals, parole officers, correctional officers, etc.

I have explored the negatives and positives of the private prison industry in the United States in addition to the impact privatizing prisons has had on inmate quality of life and inmate population sizes. While private prisons possibly provide a limited amount of cost savings to the taxpayer, the net impact of the private prison industry on the U.S. is negative. The history and idea of private prisons has been around since San Quentin was a private for-profit prison in 1852 (“Private Jails in the US,” 2017). The modern idea and practice of privatizing and profiting from prisons has been around since the early 1980’s when, “the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit (Pauly, 2017).”

The ‘Prison Industrial Complex’ signifies a criminal justice system in America that has been significantly changed during the advance development over the last 30 years with further focus on the interests of the private sector in the crime industry (Wood, 2003). The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) articulates the interests that use criminalisation, policing, surveillance and imprisonment as a solution to the social, economical and political issues of the society (Wood, 2003).

PIC or Prison-Industrial Complex is the term used to reflect the rising prison population in the US and other countries. Yes, even here in Canada.

The question that brings much controversy in today’s society should private enterprises be able to use prison inmates as a workforce. Even today there still has been no resolution. Much debate has also come from the question on what type of inmates should be able to work for the private enterprises. Given that the United States has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, private enterprises should be able to use prisoners to perform various jobs. American prisons should allow private enterprise to hire convict laborers because it can have a positive effect on their attitude and behavior.

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term we use to depict the interests of government and industry that utilization observation, policing, and detainment as answers for what may be, in fact, monetary, social, and political "issues. Through its range and effect, the jail modern complex secures the power of individuals who get their energy through racial, monetary and other auxiliary benefits by shielding current power conveyances. It benefits government and industry, and in addition those people who as of now hold control in our general public. There are six segments I trust add to the PIC. The segments are criminalization, media, reconnaissance, policing, court framework, and the detainment facilities.