The US prison system and the profit they make of their inmates

[Alfa]

Yes, i can understand that people are getting locked up for producing tons of substances that have wrecked peoples lifes. I do not believe that it is an effective approach, but I can understand. But there are many drug cases which go beyond comprehension. There is just no sense in many off them. No logical reason to lock away human beings for utterly stupid reasons. This is a perfect example: Two Years in Jail for One Joint

That leads me to questions about the US prison system:
Seems like they are busting people to up the prison population and thereby upping the production by inmates.

• Are US prisons privately owned?
• What do they produce?
• How much profit do they make?

[IHrtHalucingens]

Your right one of the most damaging negative consequences of the war on drugs has been a sky-rocketing prison population. The emphasis of government drug policies on locking up offenders rather than providing them with treatment has sent thousands of non-violent criminals to jail to serve unjust, long sentences; it has cost many thousands of drug users, both convicted and on the streets, the opportunity to receive treatment; and it has cost tax-payers billions of dollars each year.

The U.S. kicked off the new millennium by setting a new record: the nation's prison population now exceeds 2 million - the highest in the world.
Source: The Sentencing Project, Fact Sheet: Prison Populations, available at http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/sente...s20010615.html

The U.S. now has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, rivaling that of Russia. Our incarceration rate is more than four times that of Canada, five times that of Britain, and 14 times that of Japan.
Source: The Sentencing Project, Report Data, "Americans Behind Bars: U. S. and International Use of Incarceration, 1995, available at above site.

Two-thirds of these prisoners are serving time for non-violent offenses.
Source: The Justice Policy Institute press release summarizing 1998 report: "America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners"

Federal, State, and local governments spent $24 billion last year on the incarceration of non-violent criminals (many of them drug offenders) alone. This is 50% more that the entire federal welfare budget, and almost six times the amount the federal government spends annually on child care.
Source: The Justice Policy Institute press release summarizing 1998 report: "America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners" (available at above site).

A 1998 study conducted by the public health group Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNDP), a group of 37 distinguished physicians that includes high ranking officials from the Administrations of Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, shows that on a nationwide average, imprisoning an addict costs $25,900 per year, while treatment costs only $4400-6800 per year.
Source: "Addiction and Addiction Treatment," a report put out by the PLNDP, March 1998 (at above website).

Yes there are private prisons which are the ones guilty of what you speak of:

Private corrections tend to be located in Southern and Western U.S. regions
30 U.S. states, Puerto Rico & D.C. have 158 facilities
Most active states with privatization are Texas (43), California (23), Florida (10) and Colorado (9)
Less than 5% - 52,370 inmates – are housed in private facilities of U.S. prisons
186 privately operated correctional facilities in the world holding a total of 132,346 inmates
Total revenue allocated to private prisons and jails is $1 billion

Incarceration is increasingly driven by profit hungry firms looking for cheap labor. In making this point speakers or writers will reel off a sinner's list of familiar implicated corporate names: Microsoft, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret and TWA. The phenomenon looks to be a mile wide, but in reality it's only an inch deep. Most of the typically named culprits have engaged prison labor only via subcontractors who, in turn, often have only sporadic contracts with prisons. The moral stain remains: Leasing convicts is leasing convicts. But we need to re-calibrate our understanding of what's going on and look closely at the facts. Nationwide only 2,600 prisoners work for private firms 2 Why is this? Because capitalists don't like the invasive, slow, overbearing environment of prisons. Guards may approve of "making convicts pay" but in practice they regularly interrupt production to strip-search, count, and lock away the convict employees. Nor are many big firms willing to risk the bad press associated with exploiting prisoners. For example, Montgomery Ward's charter pledges that the company will not use child, slave, or convict labor.

As for profit its immense, for the prisons that get the contracts, these companies still have to pay the prisons minimum wage for the convicts work, however the convict only gets pennies of it per hour, leaving the rest for the owner of the prison.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pr...IndusComp.html

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good information.