I live in TN and almost all of the prisons and jails and workhouses are either privately owned and/or run. Odd thing is, many of the judges that do the sentencing also own stock in these institutions and bonds. What I've learned has made me sick to my stomach. Each time a person is incarcerated it creates a type of 'bond' and not the kind that gets you out of jail. It's a contract with the privately owned suppliers of every thing from the toilet paper and toothpaste the prisoners must buy from them to the cloths, towels, Roman noodles, candy, the laundry, everything is done as contracts and the person is sold as a 'bond'. The prisoner is charged for everything individually down to things like if you get sick and need to see the nurse you must have $5 on your books before you can see her and if they give you an aspirin it's $2. You work each day and the company is payed, plus the prisoner is charged for being there. There's much more to this, but you see where I'm going with this. It's simply big business and the more people, the more money.
My son broke the law by having $5 worth of weed on him, we didn't have the money for the lawyers and fines so it became probation until he paid the fines off. He tried for 2 years but had to pay the privately owned probation office $200 a week for the honor of being on probation and couldn't get the fines payed down and finally told them to 'flatten' his time, put him in the workhouse and get it over with. He did 7 months there and it was finally over, he'd payed his debt to society and was free. I'm in no way saying he didn't break the law, but it was his first time and it consumed almost 3 years of our lives. His friend's brother was found with 2 ozs of coke and had a lawyer, payed his fine and that was it, these are the reason's it was so hard to understand. I don't know for sure that things are done just like this anywhere else but do know it is done in the state and hard to except. He was only 18 when it all started and 21 before it was over and if we'd only had the money his life would have been different. I know I'm not the only Mom that's had to watch this sort of thing happen, but there has to be a change. What has happen to this world?

When you put more money in incarceration than you do in education you get a rise in prison populations.

A first year teacher makes less than $30k a year while a first year prison guard makes $40K plus a year.

I guess we can start building prisons along the Mexican border. Stack the prisons side by side to make a wall. Illegal immigrants will have to make it through the prisoners and guards before the can look for work. The guards can also patrol the border for anyone trying to break into America. (tongue in cheek).

How about the guy who robbed the bank and faked passing out because he wanted to go to jail. I think he was homeless.

When you are out of a job and nobody gives a damn, taxpayer funded jail sounds pretty good.

The real money is in contracts funded by you that keeps as many people in jail as possible. As long as you are putting people in jail why not target people that don't like you?

Maybe US prisons should be in Guinness Book of world records.

At home, in the office etc we are always told to do work lovingly, with respect etc. but unfortunately the US decides to do it by force--just like in Iraq, in Iran and in Palestine.

May God bring humanity, kindness and love and humanity in the US administration.....ameen

mrivera, why should we bail? We're ripping off poor countries to support our lifestyle. Of course, more and more of the loot is going to the richest 1%.

crivera, rampant illegal immigration can't begin to compete with Halliburton and Bush's war games for draining our precious and limited tax dollars.

But 10% of otherwise eligible voters sitting in jail does start to smell like disenfranchisement. And there are two criminal justice systems, black and white.

I've always been treated with extreme courtesy and respect by the police here in Eugene, but when I talked with a young black man who had recently arrived in town, I asked him how he liked it here. He said "Oh, after the usual routine of being questioned by the police, it seems OK". And I realized that happened to him everywhere he went. I've never been stopped by the police unless I was speeding. But I am white.

Yes, "shakker" is correct. "Rampant illegal immigration" is draining our precious and limited tax dollars. I guess we all can fool ourselves into believing that this is much needed multiculturalism.

Jan Steinman, great comment! I'm sure it holds some truth. All these victims of US injustices need to migrate to Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. I'm sure the taxpayers of those highly developed Latin countries will be happy to grant our US prisoners all their civil rights and subsidize their existence.

Maybe we need to do what Mexico does and created "how-to" pamphlets that direct US citizens into other countries in order to take advantage of their social services. Ahhh, Mexico the promise land!

I wish I could provide a reference, but I read somewhere that the life expectancy of a black male in the US is ten years higher in prison that out of prison. So stop all the whining -- the US prison system is part of its health care plan for the poor.

I'm so depressed by these numbers, but even more depressed by our unwillingness to make any changes that count. GW Bush is only the absurd extreme of a devolution that our society has been undergoing for the past 35 years or so, as those who are the most thoughtless, anti-intellectual, and blindly self-serving grab more money and power and the rest of us take our psychoactive drugs (legal and illegal) and pretend the Brave New World isn't really happening.

It's sooooo time to listen to that wake-up call that has been screaming in our ears for years if not decades and stand up for fundamental change in our most hardcore institutions. Whining and blaming just isn't good enough anymore. It's been done to death since, oh, 1968 or so, and the power brokers laugh in our faces and just go on making money and depending on their "apocalypse" to save them. THIS is the graphic novel we've been shoving to the bottom of the pile so we wouldn't really have to look at it, except there is no superhero to save us. We're going to have to do it ourselves.

Just as one example, why don't we try EDUCATING kids instead of pushing them through factory schools that do no more than prove how committed we are to a two-tier society that institutionalizes the old have/have-not dichotomy? How many of the (mostly) men in prisons are poorly or not at all educated and rejected school as one more attempt to make them realize how worthless they are? In a public school system that is based on numbers, scores, and bloodthirsty competition to get to the best college so you can be one of the haves, the people who need the most help never get it and the concept of valuing HUMANITY, in all its diverse guises, is laughably absent. While this system might have worked well in the '30s and '40s to crank out fodder for work and war, why have we not noticed that the entire paradigm has already changed--but our schools have not!?

Until each child actually learns about his/her unique potential and until we create schools that nurture kids and show them what to do with the plethora of information that bombards them daily, until our schools are organized to empower every single child (NOT just count their dismal scores), we can expect more and more of the dispossessed to wind up in these already overflowing prisons. Or dying on the streets, as someone mentioned above, whether black or homeless or sick or poor.

The institution that needs the most change and that we actually COULD change because we still maintain some local control and a real voice in its operation, is public education. Our schools lie at the bedrock of this devolving enterprise called America; if we can invest money in and re-invent what we want out of public education, we can change the direction of this beast that has become our country. Wouldn't an end to hypocrisy in schools do something to end hypocrisy in our society at large? I personally would love to see all those people in prison get the chance they never had. While I know that's not going to happen, how many more generations are we prepared to lose because of the rigidity of the status quo?

School is only one part of the answer, I know, but right now it's the only one I can get my mind around and my hands on. Thanks for listening. www.changetheschools.com

What better way to disenfranchise those who most probably would vote against you than by putting them into prison? The powers that be are not interested in ending the drug war. It serves them very well, making it very easy to criminalize large segments of a potentially dissident population. The spin-off benefits to the economy are welcome, of course.

Nietzsche - I do get that they are robbing us to pay graft to their corporate friends in return for campaign contributions.

I was just pointing out that they claim as successes abject failure wallpapered over by a lazy press that as Colbert says just writes down what they are told.

I am a part time investor. My study of the current financial and economic situation leads me to believe that the economy is very bad off being propped up by unsustainable debt and trade policy with absurd levels of corporate welfare. There is always hope but a logical reason for optimism would be better. Our capacity to weather rough times has been radically reduced by outsourcing and rampant illegal immigration.

Another Attica is coming...

Wait till they start enforcing the new immigration law being shoved down our throats. If you overstay your legally obtained visa, automatic jail time. If you are here illegally, welcome to cell block 13. KBR is building massive detention centers for a reason. A nasty time is coming folks, get ready.

Bushcon fiddles, while that shining city on the hill, burns in a drunken rage.

Legalize marijuana and watch the prison population drop by 50%
It's a rich white businessman law to keep marijuana illegal

I always laugh when fellow progressives highlight all the flaws of the USA, but yet then, in typical fashion of some progressives, give countries like Mexico a free pass. Millions of Mexicans bail their own backward country because of wide-spread systematic injustices. Here's a news flash. Americans don't bail the USA like millions of immigrants do from all their own severely corrupted countries! This reminds me of a great bunker sticker I once read, "99% of liberals give the rest of us a bad name."

So, you are poor, brown, and innocent of the charges they have accused you of. Your appointed public defender says "Well, it's your word against their's, and I don't have the time or the resources to build a case. If you got to trial and are found guilty, you will get a minimum 5 - 10 years. If you plead guilty, I can get you 3 years." You have kids and a family -- what would you take? There are *lots* of innocent people in prison who have plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because they don't believe the system would ever be on their side. And then, while they are in, if they are disrespectful to a guard that is harrassing them, or they don't follow orders because they are having a mental breakdown, they get years and years added to their sentences for misbehavior. When they come out, they can't get a job because they have been incarcerated. And now they are disenfranchised, as well. Our system of (in)justice is absurd.

Mandatory drug sentencing has been in effect for about 15 years or more so that would not have much to do with the spike.
I think the lack of full time well paying jobs are leaving people with a feeling of desperation.
One out of 4 prisoners are illegals in for crimes and not because they are here illegally. The Bush administration hikes the numbers of illegals they arrest for being illegal. I heard they don't arrest they only send out letters.
I do not see how they make money on prisons. Isn't that a drain? They have to feed and provide medical care.
I am curious to know what kind of jobs they have the inmates working at?

Besides providing high-paying jobs at tax-payer expense through the prison and legal system (and more and more to private contractors), the increasing prison population provides a steady supply of slave labor -- for the government and the private sector alike -- while disenfranchising minorities and the poor who tend to vote on the left.

Hey, it's a money making industry, not an institution of reformation or rehabilitation. Besides, the more we can purge felons off the voting rolls, the better chances for GOP victory in 08. Punitive 3 strikes sentencing with adverse impact on the poor, is just the type of American justice we should impose in the Middle East, oh wait, we've done it better with Gitmo and Abu Gharab (sic sick sic sick).

Prison labor: that's it in a nutshell. Sent to work for the greedy pukes that use their labor, the inmates work for peanuts (well, they can't even buy peanuts with what they earn). Non-crimes... minor crimes- those incarcerated make the very best (hmm, can't call 'em "wage slaves", guess I can just call 'em) slaves. This is slave labor, period. And the big "drug busts" "they" always gloat over... often just poor hippies, growing weed- they make AWESOME slaves, are ideal prisoners, and are ever so much easier to bust than the dudes with the meth- 'cause the latter have guns and stuff, and bad attitudes.

shakker, you miss the point. the idea is not to save taxpayer money---it's to transfer taxpayer money to corporations,eg prisons, military, health care, insurance... soon they will have all the money. when it gets to them it stops. we will be lucky if a 12 hour shift earns us food and shelter.

The prison population needs to be added to the unemployed ranks. We are pushing 2% of the population, and (removing children, elderly and the severely disabled not in the work force), we may have as much as 4% of our workforce in prison over and above the percent in prison in Europe.

So when we gloat over our unemployment rate being lower than Europe we should report the fact that we are lying. The percent unemployed is similar, however we lock a lot of our unemployed up while the Europeans let them stay home. Which do you think is cheaper?

I'd be curious to see if the rise in the prison population corresponds to any increase in political donations or lobbying efforts by the prison industrial complex and its effect on legislation. Just follow the money and it will lead you to the depths of hell.

Let's eliminate the double standard and bring back Alcohol Prohibition. Prison business would be booming then boy. We would have half the labor force in prison and the other half guarding them. And the elite will make money hand over fist. Beauty plan eh?

While stevied6's points are all well-taken, another dimension to Prison Nation USA is that many of those incarcerated are in there for comitting some pretty damn minor crimes, or even non crimes. But they were black, and therefore do time for things like simple pot posession that a white never does time for.

But expanding on this remark - prisons serve an important role as a damping mechanism for any possible uphevals among capitalism's reseve army of the unemployed, which in the US is kept along racial lines to keep any sense of class solidarity from developing.

Was it Tolstoy (or Dostoyevsky?) who said something to the effect that the moral character of a nation can be judged by looking at it's prisons.

The US is #1 in prisoners - more than even China or India each having four times greater a population. Let that fact soak in. Does that make you proud?

True the U.S. has people in prison. It should,with us it is just another buisness. you allow the drugs into the country cops earn a living,judges,lawers,construction building prisons,arms dealers, foodand clothing manufacture. Crime at home and war in foreign countries is the way of the Bush crime family. We are number one. So what? if you don't like it,we will just bomb you into the stoneage.

Everyone is missing the point in these facts about increasing jail populations. This is a symptom, not the disease! Why do people committ crimes? 98% of the time it's because they are forced to by social and economic hardships! Per Capita, Canada has a higher rate of gun ownership per number of citizens than any other country in the world yet the number of violent and economic crimes is less than 1% per capita of what the United States is! Ever wonder why this happened? It's because Canada has alternatives to help their citizens cope with hardships and difficult situations that all of us must face from time to time. If people here in the U.S. didn't feel the sting of an uncaring government and found themselves in a blind alley with no options would there be as much crime? I hardly think so. It's time to face the facts and acknowledge that a capitalist based democracy just doesn't work because the call of "greed" will buy our government cheap and they will always sell out the small-fry citizen every time when the companies throw enough graft and bribery at the representatives of our government. It's time for a move not to the center but to the extreme left side. It's the only hope we have of salvaging humanity and dignity for the average citizen in this country.

Well, what is "corrupt" now-a-days? How does one define "corruption?"
Our government participates in drug-running because there's a lot of money in it, as long as drugs are illegal. It's good for big pharma, too, because after all, if you can go to jail for using "illicit" drugs, you might be willing to spend big money to "feel good" with prescription medication.
Our young people are the victims of this insanity, and the same old corporate big guys - building jails, privatizing jails, hiring security personnel - bring in the big bucks. We are definitely a sick and scary society. Soon we'll all be "working at McDonalds," or if we get a college degree, "working in business" (marketing, accounting, administration, etc.), or carrying a gun somewhere - whether its local security, border security, airport security, or security for capitalism (carrying a gun off to war) - this is the most violent, oppressive society I know. Does anyone see a bottoming out, somewhere along the road to oblivion?