Powerful Private Prison Profits
“You’re not a number here. You come here, it’s personalized. It’s please, thank you, sirs,…you feel like a human being in here.”
Guess which customer-friendly company the person quoted above is referring to:
- Ritz-Carlton — king of luxury hotels.
- Southwest — king of low fares and witty flight attendants.
- Nordstrom — king of courteous retail salespeople.
- CCA—wait a minute, CC-what?
Corrections Corp of America
If you picked #4, you’re correct. The pleased patron is referring to Nashville-based Corrections Corp of America.
CCA is the fifth largest U.S. prison system, with 69,000 beds in 63 prisons in 19 states plus Washington, DC. Only 3 states and the federal government run larger prison operations.
Prison Industry Is Big Business
Now that the U.S. has over 2 million prisoners behind bars — the largest prison population in the world — the prison industry is big corporate business. Shares of CCA stock are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (CXW), and with 1000 people added to U.S. prisons and jails each week, the future of CCA is looking bright.
But never mind its current success. CCA, like most companies, wants even more business. And there’s only so many criminals to go around. What’s a poor prison company to do?
Recruiting California Inmates
Seeing how California’s prisons are so overpopulated, CCA is recruiting convicts from Schwarzenegger land to come do their time in Tennessee!
Using a video advertisement piped into correctional institutions, CCA is showing thousands of west coast inmates why they should volunteer to move east of the Mississippi:
- Larger and cleaner jail cells.
- ESPN plus 78 other TV channels.
- Views of tranquil cow pastures.
- Inmates in the “Dorm of the Week” get to stay up all night, watch a movie, and choose between cheeseburgers or pizza.
One of the 80 California inmates who transferred to CCA’s West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason last autumn said: “If they know what we know now, that system would be emptied out.”
Rise of the Prison-Industrial Complex
In addition to CCA, there are other booming private prison companies: the GEO Group runs 61 prisons with 49,000 beds, and Cornell Companies has 79 prisons with a capacity of 19,200.
As with the Military-Industrial Complex, which profits by sending more and more of the population to war, the Prison-Industrial Complex profits by putting more and more of the population behind bars.
Eric Schlosser, in his ground-breaking 1998 Atlantic Monthly article, pointed out:
Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars�the majority of them nonviolent offenders�mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers.
The lure of big money is corrupting the nation’s criminal-justice system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass tough-on-crime legislation — combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs of these laws — has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties.
And therein lies the true reason such a high percentage of the U.S. population is incarcerated: it makes money.
Read More: private prisons, CCA, Corrections Corporation of America, Prison-Industrial Complex
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“And therein lies the true reason such a high percentage of the U.S. population is incarcerated: it makes money.”
Lemme see if I got this right; we COULD have the non-violent low risk offenders working, rehabbing, etc., thus being a productive(non-voting) person, but since incarceration means money going to an enterprise that can more directly funnel a portion of those funds to me and my party brethren, well, (chest swells) “I am truly tough on crime!”
Tom: You mentioned voting…I think THOSE are laws that need to be revisited. The majority of inmates are low-income minorities, and although state laws vary, most have their right to vote taken away…some permanently, even after they do their time. When you have a means to remove the right to vote from a good percentage (2 - 7 million) of the population, there’s a motive for making laws tougher that will disproportionately affect poor minorities.
We were all proud in the 1980s when we got tough on crime–specifically drug offenders. Now, the prison system is engorged with a bunch of non-dealer marijuana smokers doing heavy time while others whose threat to society is much greater, are out on parole in much less time. As I mentioned in a previous post, speeding on the highway is still a crime, but the criminals get a ticket…they don’t get locked away for 10 years at a cost to taxpayers of $40,000 per convict. I think the laws and sentencing need to get rebalanced in proportion with the crime…but I doubt if the private prison companies want to see any reduction in sentencing, because more prisoners = more money for them.
P.S. I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet this morning, so apologies if that was hard to follow…it was hard for me to follow, too…hope it made a little sense ;-)
The Horror, the horror!
The average educational level of a u.s. prisoner is 3rd grade. He may have attended and graduated higher grades, but upon entry every prisoner (I refuse to say “inmate”, in my mind, it somehow seems to legitimize a corrupt system) is tested. The average prisoner is found to have an education at the 3rd grade level.
20% of prisons buy food and other supplies on the spot market. Meaning, expired or near expiration date. It also may mean substandard due to improper formulation. Food is tasted at a plant. If it is found to be of substandard taste…like too salty, it is packaged anyway and sold to people who buy that sort of thing….like prisons, where buyers are on the take (like her in Oregon lately). Prisons like the low prices because it makes them look like good executives. Prisoners voices are not heard…because who wants to listen to a crook? Whiney little creeps.
So now we have private prisons, where prisoners will be taken from california where thewy have at least some voice through law and advocacy and send them to profit driven, closed systems.
It is no surprise to me that they can convince a 3rd grader to their way of thinking, either through argument or coersion.
Their cells sure look like a Beverley Hilton lifestyle to me…not.
This is exactly what conservatives want. They want to privatize everything in sight from Medicare to prisons to Veteran’s Affairs. Too bad that the companies don’t care about doing what they are supposed to be doing, it’s all about the money.
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