The Professor
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- Mar 4, 2011
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In an article entitled Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, author John W. Whitehead revealed startling facts about America's prison system. According to Whitehead, Presently, one out of every 100 Americans is serving time behind bars
. one in fifty Americans are working their way through the prison system, either as inmates, or while on parole or probation. Whitehead also observed that most of those held in federal prisons were convicted of the non-violent and victimless crime of marijuana possession. Sadly, there are financial incentives for the high incarceration rate. As more and more detention systems are put into the hands of private enterprises, profit becomes more important than any other consideration. Of course, when a for-profit company makes profit every time an inmate is sentenced, the possibility of judicial corruption is obvious. Here is a sample of Whiteheads fine article:
Little wonder, then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet while providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry, its a $70 billion gold mine. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, and heres the kicker, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Doubtless, a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably become more corrupt, as well. For example, consider the kids for cash scandal which rocked Luzerne County, Penn., in 2009. For ten years, the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, who made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings. When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received 28 years, but not before thousands of young lives had been ruined.
The rest of John Whiteheads fine article can be read at the following link.
Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex - BlackListedNews.com
Little wonder, then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet while providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry, its a $70 billion gold mine. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, and heres the kicker, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.
Doubtless, a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably become more corrupt, as well. For example, consider the kids for cash scandal which rocked Luzerne County, Penn., in 2009. For ten years, the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, who made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings. When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received 28 years, but not before thousands of young lives had been ruined.
The rest of John Whiteheads fine article can be read at the following link.
Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex - BlackListedNews.com
