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Report: Private Prisons Love Mass Incarceration, And Want Politicians To Love It Too
Private prison companies have helped fuel government policies which lead to an increase in prison population and boost their profits, according to a recent report.
Employees of the for-profit prison company GEO Group. The private prison population has grown 353.7 percent in the past 15 years, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute. Major private prison companies have an incentive to encourage policies which keep that number on the rise. (Photo: Geo Group) The private prison population has grown 353.7 percent in the past 15 years, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute. Major private prison companies have an incentive to encourage policies which keep that number on the rise.
"Steady increases in the number of people in private prisons, especially those coming from federally contracted beds, translate into increased revenues for private prison companies," the report says.
"Since private prison companies are in the business to make money, policies that maintain or increase incarceration boost their revenues; from a business perspective, the economic and social costs of mass incarceration are 'externalities' that aren't figured into their corporate bottom line," it says.
Some of the biggest names in the private prison industry have given $835,514 to federal candidates since 2000 and a stunning $6,092,331 to state politicians in the last five elections cycles, according to data in the report.
"A lot of it is focused on the state level because a lot of the people in prison are in state facilities," Paul Aston, an author of the report, told TPM.
"With most states and the federal government operating under record deficits and decreasing budgets, private prison companies have a growing desire to establish influential connections with policymakers, with two goals: pitching private prisons as a lower cost alternative to building or maintaining state facilities; and fighting policies that might reduce the use of incarceration," the report states.
The report also points to the revolving door between the private prison companies and the government agencies that have a say in their spending.
One recent example: Harley Lappin, who retired as head of the Bureau of Prisons after he was arrested for drunk driving, was recently named the chief corrections officer at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest provider of private prisons to federal, state and local government. Lappin said in a press release announcing his new position that the company "has an outstanding track record of working well with its government partners as they strive to set the highest standards in the administration of a correctional system."
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33 Comments so far
Show AllMore crime is good for the prison biz!
Let's have more crime, so we may have criminals, so we may have more prisoners, so we may have more profits for the prison biz.
Yeah to the great, liberating free market, and its buddy, free enterprise!
Actual crimes and criminals aren't really necessary, just buy some politicians, some police and a few judges, and of course a little media for some perception management, and the profits will start rolling in.
The corrupt have always found slavery to be highly lucrative.
It's all dependent on your definition of "criminal."
At the present time, we have allowed the actual thugs to create the definition.
So poor minorities fill the prisons.
While the actual robber baron criminals, across the board, run our former country.
So, right now the country belongs to the robbers. If we don't take it back very soon, all who resist this unfortunate state of affairs will join the economically disadvantaged in the existing debtor's prisons.
WE ARE NEXT PEOPLE.
Let's use our remaining time wisely.
The prison industrial scam is just the half of it. We shouldn't expect them to stop with privatized prisons. Law enforcement will be privatized as well.
As the Hurricane Katrina response was organized, Blackwater moved in.
Accountable community/public law enforcement will be defunded and replaced by unaccountable Blackwater/Xe mercenaries patrolling our streets. They will be paid for the amount of arrests they make, not for public safety.
This is the horror awaiting our children's America if we can't stop it.
This notion should be nothing but paranoid fantasy, but I'm convinced it is inevitable on this road to totalitarian corporatocracy.
"has an outstanding track record of working..."----You think I don't know bullshit when I hear it?
As someone has already pointed out, most of us here on CD are old. Anybody who has lived as long as we have knows the sound of somebody who has a long history of lying, even when he says something devoid of meaning.
Industrialized everything...hey, you get 3 squares, healthcare and a bed but the sex will cost you cigarettes, the currency behind bars. Puns intended.
will homelessness land you in prison?
speaking your mind?
as troubling a topic as it is to raise, especially on a Friday, our dwindling global quantity of viable resources ensures competition at every step...
not only competition between people, but between industry and people...
fewer people, in general, would probably postpone several scenarios, if only for a while...
once one is imprisoned, you know...
mercy, me...
How many people are going into the penal system because in some States that is the only way to get helthcare or social services? Has the for profit prison industry lobbyed to create this situation?
Lovely. You've assigned blame. Fabulous. Now what? Gonna put 300 million of them in jail?
That's the problem they had when they used that line in the past. There are too many of them to jail. Moreover, how would you pay for their incarceration? Or maybe you'd propose a more 'final solution' to the problem of yankee militarism and corruption? I'm sure they'd not mind at all if the rest of the world came calling all at once and armed with the weapons that were made in the USA (and elsewhere)...
The 'choice' the people have when voting in the USA is between the far right Democrats, and the extreme right Republicans. That isn't a choice. That is like being offered an excrement sandwich or a diarrhea sandwich. What choice, the options are all shit.
...the 'choice'...
yes, i understand that. however, this shit is not god given. the people can change this, and only the people can.
There being no god I agree with you, to a degree. I think the shit's out of control at this point, no I don't believe that anyone is in charge of anything at this point. People and politicians are reacting to the events, they're not trying at all to affect the events that they know are coming down the pipe. It's a crucial difference, in military terms it's the difference between an army that is winning and one that is losing. Losers are the ones who react to events. In driving terms it's the time when all but one of your wheels has left the pavement, and you have the time to think 'fuck, this is going to hurt'.
People sell themselves at different prices. The German people after WWI were starving. I can understand them looking the other way while cattle cars full of people bound for the death camps rolled by.
Wernher von Braun and his team of scientists stepped over Jewish slaves who were dying of starvation and exhaustion---just to pursue interesting work. This is not so easy to defend.
What is our excuse?
This reminds me of the Judges in Pennsylvania who incarcerated juveniles for kickbacks.
Here is another corrupt judge story that is finally getting a little attention and hopefully will get even more.
Sunny Sheu: Murdered for Investigating NY Foreclosure Judge Joseph Golia?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/sunny-sheu-murdered-for-investigating-ny-foreclosure-judge-joseph-golia.html
To borrow an analogy from your 11:02 post, didn't the people in 1930s Germany say something like that?
You can bet you A$$ there is.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/opinion/update-fbi-doj-refuse-investigate-charges-judicial-corruption
And that is just for starters. I have made it a point to look into the mortgage fraud fiasco going back to 2001.
furthermore....
Mukasey Declines to Create a U.S. Task Force to Investigate Mortgage Fraud
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/06justice.html
This is what happens when you privatize services that rightfully belong to the commons.
Of course a for-profit business is going to seek to maximize profits. They are legally obliged to do so. It makes sense that they will fund politicians friendly to them to pass laws in their favor. Simply define as criminal anything you don't like and you kill two birds with one stone: make money by incarcerating the busybodies and protestors (ie: terrorists) who get in your way.
This has the flavor of the organizational triumph of the SS-WVHA, the nazi organization behind the economics of the concentration camp slave labor rented out to industrial concerns. Seems America is working on smoothing out the more obvious rough spots in the paradigm. Friendly fascism indeed.
Our entire system is based upon conflict-of-interests between the public & private sector that serve & reward the greedy fucks who know how to play by its rules, for life is literally a game to such people, life is something to be won. Government of "We the people" implies that there are social services we institute for ourselves on our own behalf. Handing over those services to for-profit corporate interests -- education, security, war, healthcare, energy, environmental stewardship, government itself -- is against our (ie: the public's) interests by definition.
In the corporate paradise being created by this universal privatization you are one of four things: an owner, a henchman, a serf, or a prisoner. Welcome to the new feudalism.
Private prisons are sold to gullible politicians as being a cost saving measure. Let me tell you about the savings they deliver.
In 1980, Colorado spent a fairly consistent $70 million for it's department of corrections. We were sold a system of privatized prisons as a cost savings, and for some STUPID reason, we bought it. Now, after 30+ years of those great savings, we spend 11 TIMES that, to the tune of over $770 MILLION per YEAR on locking people up. We spend as much now JUST ON CANNABIS busts and jailing as we did then for EVERYTHING. And this is after the state voted in medicinal cannabis, AND the citizens of Denver voted to make cannabis busts the LEAST priority for the cops. The cop's response has been so far to bust MORE people for weed than ever before. Once again, the will of the PEOPLE is not only ignored, but actively fought AGAINST.
When locking up people becomes a for profit item, then EVERYTHING becomes a reason to lock people up. Why do you think they don't hire anyone with an IQ over 100 to be a cop? Smart people understand why you don't screw everyone for everything, idiots like the cops we have now WILL lock up everyone for everything, and that makes more money for the crooks who run CCA and fellow companies. BTW, CHENEY owns a LOT of stock in CCA, do we REALLY need to make scum like him money by destroying people's lives?
There are some things that MUST be done by the state, and NEVER be allowed up for profit. Health care, prisons, and defense are three of those things. Money is NOT a reason to destroy people's lives, regardless of what the rich tell us every day.
Excellent post. That we have let profit motives drive health care, prison, and defense tells you all you need to know about the ethical stance of the US.
Another product of corporate conservative's "free" market utopia. Torture is a growth industry.
Direct democracy
So this is where the Republicans will send the jobless, the poor and the retirees.
Yep, locking up people, particularly if they are non-violent drug offenders or people of color, is very popular among those who make gigantic profits from the prison industrial complex. The study mentioned in the article states, "In 2010 alone, GEO and CCA (two major corporations in the prison industrial complex) saw combined revenue of over $2.9 billion."
Amerika has the largest population of inmates (2.4 million) in its prisons and jails than any other nation, including China, on the planet. When the number of people who are on probation or parole is added, the number of people in the criminal justice systems soars to 7.2 million, or 1 in every 32 adult residents in Amerika (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11).
As the most radical fascist elements in Amerika begin their planned austerity measures and brutal crackdown on those who protest, these prison operators and their cronies in Congress and the White House will prosper immensely.
Excellent post by Lohmann at Jun 24 2011 - 11:26am. Sums it all up.
We live in an utterly pathological societal arrangement.
Thanks, Oikos.
The insane thing is, it's like a party no one wants to attend and yet here we find ourselves because we don't know how to get out of it. For too long we have lived in this Gramscian crisis: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
The world is reaching a crisis point where all these morbid symptoms are becoming terminal. The forces of greed never willingly relinquish their power, and they have plans afoot to contain the world's blooming insurrectionary fervor in a perpetual state of profitable divide-and-conquer internecine conflicts on the one hand, and profitable surveillance state on the other to ensure the former continues unimpeded.
But it's obvious the world can no longer endure the status quo. We have reached an evolutionary stage in our species where we will either move cooperatively ahead together, or die out in pyrrhic victories. There will be an eruption, and I believe we are seeing its incipient stages. Whether we will live through the eruption is another matter -- these game players, these vorocrats, will play to the death to win: theirs after ours if need be.
only criminals and elected politicians are guaranteed health care.
like I said, only criminals.
Judges, public prosecutors, and police whose pension plan portfolios include investments in private prison management companies should be investigated and held liable for conflict of interest.
It is in their financial interest as shareholders of those prisons, to increase the conviction rate. Someone should start investigating this somewhere, perhaps in one of the Southern states... and blow the lid off this scandalous state of affairs country-wide.
Where are the Pulitzer-prize winning journalists on a hot topic like this one?
>>Where are the Pulitzer-prize winning journalists on a hot topic like this one?
On the phone to their brokers instructing them to buy more stock in The Industrial Prison sector.
"The Farm: Angola USA" is extraordinarily difficult to get but demonstrates that truth seekers are as tenacious and insidious as capitalists.
The Force IS with us.
Sounds like good business.
Create so many laws, that no one can live a life without breaking some.
Then incarcerate them, then get free or cheap labor to do all the stuff you pay people to do now for the excessive amount of minimum wage.
And, of course, there is always the fees for this and that that creates a bill to the prisoner. Worse than the company store...
Baby steps, baby. Baby steps to you know where....
where is common seance in all this
how on earth can something run for profit be cheaper than something run at cost ?
am I wrong to to think that a 20% profit is a 20% increase in price ?
are politicians really this bad a simple math skills ?
how on earth can they survive with out this level of math skills needed to see this ?
This substantiates that the government’s view of its poorer citizens are merely as commodities. You warehouse commodities so let’s warehouse people. Or should I say ‘chattle’, to be rounded up and used strictly for the benefit of the capitalists. When the chattle get sick or there’s not enough food for the whole herd capitalism does what it can to cut its losses. For the sick ones you hasten their demise by denying any costly measures that would extend their life (Medicare), or perhaps setting a limit on the amount of money capital is willing to invest to prolong that life (vouchers).
The most absurd action by our government was to create a law to make a completely harmless substance illegal, automatically making large segments of the population potential criminals. Then they convict you of using or possessing this harmless substance in order to make you a state slave; making sure that tax payers foot the bill to enslave its own population.
BTW, this article failed to point out that there are more African-Americans in jails and within the prison system currently then there were actual slaves in the south in 1860. People need to realize that the prison-industrial-government-complex is about controlling the herd and enslaving those viewed as being less than human. The people are under siege by the capitalists.
I know when I am falling short. I do it anyway. Early next year I should have my house paid for when I use what is left of my 401k.
In the meantime I am a participant in the most corrupt cycle of greed, ostentation, and self indulgence the world has ever known. I'm not a big player, but still a player, and if I can get out of this trap...
I've said all this before.
It is interesting that no one has mentioned the KBR no-bid concentration camps built while we were still being Bushwhacked. They are still there in the Obamanation. One wonders, when they start rounding up dissidents and thinkers, if the camps will be subcontracted out to Xe for prison guards and administrators. Not a pleasant thing to look forward to, eh?
If you read some German history, none of this will come as a surprise.
Remember, "arbeit macht frei!"