Why Corporations are Happy to Send Your Children to Prison for Nearly Any Small Offense
Did you know that crime hasn’t increased over the last 30 years, but the prison population has virtually exploded? This revealing set of facts and data make it plain that there is a serious problem with American prisons and the way we’ve set up our justice system. Also, General Electric, which owns MSNBC, tends have an interesting fondness for showing one documentary after another exposing prison life. Some believe that showing these documentaries helps to desensitize the American public to the modern day concentration camps that are serving as funnels for billions in corporate money.
Black people are hit the hardest by this phenomenon, and many of our children are sent to prison for even minor offenses. A prison bed is built for your child on the day he is born. We have to make ourselves aware of this problem.
Prison privatization in its current form began in 1984 as a result of the War on Drugs. While crime rates otherwise remained steady dating back to 1925, the number of arrests quickly exploded. While the War on Drugs initially had a small impact on incarceration, it was President Reagan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that kickstarted the prison boom.[1]
From 1970 to 2005, the prison population rose 700 percent, while violent crime remained steady or declined.[2]Between 1990 and 2009, the populations of private prisons shot up 1,600 percent.[3] Today, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world – 754 inmates per 100k residents as of 2008.[1] This is roughly 600% that of the rest of the civilized world, with England and Wales having 148, and Australia 126 inmates per 100k residents.[1] As of 2010, private corporations house over 99,000 inmates in 260 facilities nationwide.[4]
Corrections Corp. of America and other private contractors became members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a non-profit 501(c)(3) association that advocates “tough on crime” legislation.[5] In their 2010 report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corp. of America discussed how drug policy reform threatens their business model:
The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.[6]
To ensure those pieces of legislation aren’t passed, Corrections Corp. of America spent $970,000[7] and GEO Group spent $660,000[8] lobbying Congress in 2010 alone. In Corrections Corp. of America’s Feb 2011 press release, CEO Damon Hininger stated, “…we are pleased our populations have remained strong, in excess of the 80,000 inmate milestone we surpassed late in 2010.”[9] With the 3.2% increase in inmate population over the previous year, Corrections Corp. of America was able to make $511.26M profit, earning their CEO over $3,000,000 in compensation.[9][10]
Private prison proponents claim that private corporations are able to provide the same service more efficiently than the government. However, according to the Department of Justice’s “Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons” report, private prisons offer at best a 1% cost savings over their government operated counterparts, while at the same time having 49% more assaults on staff and 65% more assaults on other inmates.[11]
Phoning in Profit
Corporations owning correctional facilities is not the only way that prisons and the War on Drugs have been used as a source of income. For instance, even in government-ran facilities, inmates and their families are regularly subject to price gouging by phone carriers.[12][14] While the average cost of a phone call in the United States is 3 cents per minute[15], inmates and their families end up paying between 16 cents and $5.00 per minute.[13] The profits are then split between the carrier and the government body who awarded the contract. In fact, it is not uncommon for the government body to receive a signing bonus from the carrier, like $17M in the case of Los Angeles County.[14] Unlike the public, the Federal Communications Commission has no safeguards against price gouging when it applies to those behind bars.
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So are you advocating that if you do a crime you should not be punished for it?
If you are busted for breaking and entering or robbing a store, how about car jacking, selling a controlled substance, kidnapping, attempted murder?
The trick is “don’t do the crime’
STOP MAKING IT A BAG OF HONOR TO HAVE BEEN LOCKED UP!
As long as non whites- so called minorities continue to pray to a caucasian man as god nothing will ever change.
This is simply another form of oppression. it has a shelf life. Prison for profit is an evil game to play. There is a time of reciprocity and vengeance coming upon a people who failed to show righteous mercy when they had favor and the ability to do so. Oppression is an institutionalized conduct disorder that justifies itself through graft and the buying of favor from politicians. The mob called it “Having the official, [Judges, politicians and police], in their pocket.”
Criminals warehousing criminals for profit with the favor of criminals in high office. The wicked, though they go hand in hand, shall not go unpunished. The private and governmental prison systems are a waste of human potential. The system should be turning out law abiding and productive citizens and not hold them as slaves while denying them their citizenship. It is a crime against humanity and should be tried in the World Criminal Court now that the players are clearly identified. There is an International Prosecutor who has the power to do so. Bring human rights complaints through the E.U. and pin them to trade agreements with the United States with the expectation of full citizenship and the emptying of prisons of persons who are indeed redeemable and willing to deinstitutionalize themselves.
Trying the US in the world court is like seeking ‘justice’ in any domestic court in this country. You have criminals who are creating laws that they then ignore while going after vulnerable communities who can’t buy their way out of the prison system. You can’t expect those who benefit most from our oppression to bring about justice. They have proven themselves morally bankrupt and cannot be trusted to speak out against injustice, let alone to take action to right wrongs.
Crack cocaine = at least 10 years for less than a gram of coke. Kilo of cocaine = at least 3 years up to 5. For a kilo? Who gets caught with crack and who gets caught with kilos? You all know the drill. It’s always a black and white thing. It will eventually be the demise of this country.
A justice system that isn’t color-blind cannot be just, but it would be helpful to have numbers more recent than the 2001 report “Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons” to go on.
According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of “offenders” fell in 2011 for the thrid year in a row.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4537
According to this 2012 report, total state and private prison populations actually fell in 2009 and 2010:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/scefy8210.pdf
Anyone profiting from unjust “justice” is profiting just a little less every year if this trend continues, but sentences that are way out of line with the crime committed have no place in a just society.
Jail cells replaced the chain of the past.
We have come so far to be so far from where we ought to be.
Dr. Boyce, you tell us, “As of 2010, private corporations house over 99,000 inmates in 260 facilities nationwide.”
According to this US government document…
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf
… “On December 31, 2010, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,612,395 prisoners…”
So, at the end of 2010, inmates at privately-operated prisons accounted for only 6.1% of all prison inmates in the US – a pretty small share.
More importantly, according to the same document (Table 1 on Page 2), the total US prison population was 1,391,261 at the end of 2000, meaning the total US prison population rose by 221,134 (16%, or 1.5% annually) over the 10 years ending in 2010.
Appendix Table 14 in this document points out that in 2000 there were 449 White prisoners and 3,457 Black prisoners per 100,000 US residents, meaning the ratio of Black-to-White prisoners was 7.7 to 1 at that time. This ratio fell to 6.7 as of the end of 2010, which is not in line with your continued reports that there has been an explosion in the rates of Black incarceration compared to White incarceration in recent years. It appears that these numbers tell us exactly the opposite happened between 2000 and 2010.
Even one additional inmate is a tragedy for his or her family of any race, but your constant harping on a recent new epidemic of black men being sent to prison in the US due to the increasing privatization of certain prisons does not appear to be supported by the facts.
Or maybe I have misunderstood these figures? You are a finance and investing expert, Dr. Boyce. Please help us all understand how the numbers in this recent US government document square with what you have been telling us about the US prison population of Black men and children “exploding” in recent years.
The CCA and the Prison Industrial Complex is here to stay simply because they’re supported by money and power. The problem is that prison has become too comfortable, prisoners in some cases live much better than many of us on the outside. All of the things we pay have to pay for on the outside they get for free and we have to pay for it. It appears that we are the real victims. The only solution is to create opportunities and better education to make living on the outside more attractive than going to prison.