Essay On Prison System

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A huge issue in America is the growing industry of privatized prisons. Usually referred to as the Prison Industrial Complex, the issue ties together many problems like the connection between the massive rate of imprisonment for nonviolent crimes as well as the growing political influence of the private prison industries and companies that thrive on inmate population. As this problem gets larger and larger, the prisons in the United States fill up continuously, because of a mentality that years of imprisonment can fix pretty much any problem.
Between 1970 and 2005 the US' prison population grew by a massive 700% (Kirkham), far outpacing both population growth and crime rates. Today it's got to the point where America is home to 5% of the world's population but a quarter of the world's prisoners (The PEW). And not only does America have the highest imprisonment rates of any country in the entire world, it also has the highest rate of kids incarceration.
Over 130,000 kids are detained in the US every year and on any given day there are over 70,000 kids in detention (Knafo). But the biggest winners of this mass incarceration haven't been the taxpayers, but the private prison companies who are making giant profits out of people being in jail. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2010 the two largest prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, while their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth more than $3 million (The Associated Press).
Private prisons didn't really exist before the early 1980s when US states and the federal government needed a solution to the overcrowding in public prisons. But between 1990 and 2009 the number of people in private prisons increased by a...

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...the community and a lot cheaper than sending people to prison. In 2011 the Governor of Illinois office reported that in the states first year of the program it has diverter more than 1,000 nonviolent offenders (AP).
Another thing states could is ban contracts that require certain occupancy in a prison. By not signing this states can use state run facilities and not worry about having to fill up prisons just so the corporation doesn’t sue them. By doing this there will be no incentive for sending people to jail.
Privatization of public institutions is just a bad idea. It creates corruption in people with power and they profit at the public's expense. The government should be responsible for managing the jails and prisons. To give this vital government system into the hands of corporation’s whose main goal is to make money it is inevitable that corruption will occur.

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