Prison Industrial Complex Essay

The United State’s Prison Industrial Complex is a term that defines the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political “problems” (Herzing 2005). Cheerlessly, the Prison Industrial Complex is a relevant and powerful conflict unsympathetic to minority groups particularly in the United States. A major influence on the Prison Industrial Complex includes the War on Drugs, which leads to the mass incarceration of certain groups of individuals, specifically impoverished communities of minorities. As research suggests, it is acceptable to conclude that the War on Drugs has been merely the stem of the Prison Industrial Complex.

As a result of the Prison Industrial Complex, the private prisons that have been produced to gain profit from inmate labor, which are enforced by many major corporations, are ultimately an enormous repercussion from the Prison Industrial Complex. In addition to the privatization of facilities, immigration detention centers, have also started to appear, which also produce profits.

The privatization has been compared numerous times to modern day slavery (Florio 2016). In other words, minorities are being held in prisons, owned by the government, working for extremely low wages. Lastly, another prime consequence that has been produced from the Prison Industrial Complex is the major ramifications that act as results against minorities—mental health issues. By contemplating on the weight that has been composed by the Prison Industrial Complex, one can argue that this underground business is principally a cycle for minorities, which does not have an end to, ultimately causing them major negative concomitants. Although other multiple individuals might object to it, the Prison Industrial Complex should be a major concern for minorities in the United States, if it already is not. In order to gain insight with respect to the complex issue of the Prison Industrial Complex, one has to consider its formulation, the privatization of prisons, and the consequences that it has

pertained.
Correspondingly, the War on Drugs is essentially the only major contributor that has enacted the Prison Industrial Complex.

The War on Drugs, as previously stated, was first introduced by Nixon and reinforced by its preceding presidents. It is a campaign that was launched in 1971, by President Richard Nixon during his time in office, but was not enacted into full force until the 80s when Ronald Reagan was in office. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding went from eight million to 95 million dollars. During the same time, funding for treatment and prevention was reduced (Florio 2016). As a result, convictions for drug offenses, after the announcement of the War on Drugs, are the single most important cause of the explosion of incarceration rates in the United States (Alexander 2012:60). That is to say that if the War on Drugs was not introduced and reinforced following Nixon, the United State’s prison system could have avoided mass incarceration, exceptionally for people of color. To illustrate, nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs (Alexander 2012:60). Sadly, it is more than obvious that it appears that the War on Drugs was a certain phenomenon that was distinctly formulated to target individuals of color. Although the War on Drugs was in reality created to diminish the drugs and punish those that were located with them, it did absolutely the opposite. Few would guess that the

United State’s prison system leaped from approximately 350,000 thousand to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates (Alexander 2012:93). With the War on Drug’s harsh laws, including the mandatory minimums and three strikes you’re out, minorities have been targeted like never before. It is fair to contemplate about the War on Drug’s primary focus, that being mass incarceration, to control minorities, which has led to the formation of private prisons, fueling to the hunger of government supremacy.
Henceforth, the privatization of prisons started to become, without a doubt, a normal spectacle. The United State’s prison system has concentrated on the elimination of human bodies through what might be portrayed as normal, until taking an extensive look at the informalities. In order to eliminate problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy, prisons in the United States, can certainly perform the magic necessary (Davis 2000). Although one might believe that indeed the prisons are eliminating these problems, it is rather the human bodies that are being extinguished. Therefore, it is important to realize that prisons, particularly in the United States, are being built in order to profit, without in reality taking into account the damage that so numerous of individuals are pinned with for the rest of their lives. However, one cannot disregard the individuals that certainly deserve rehabilitation. During the proliferation of prisons, the privatization started to increasingly appear, with the obvious goal of profiting.

In March 1998, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest U.S. private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the U.S., and other major countries. Additionally, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest U.S. prison company, claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in North America, as well as other countries (Davis 2000).

Undoubtedly, it is intense to contemplate that the United States has allowed the privatization of prisons, rather than concentrating on the rehabilitation of current inmates. To put it into perspective, between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased from $293 million to $462 million. CC raised its revenues from $138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the profits of these private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor (Davis 2000). Significantly, the privatization of prisons has brought and ultimate benefit for two major corporations. In addition, major companies whom products we consume every day, have relied on these private prisons, through prison labor, for their conspicuous benefit. It is unsettling to visualize companies enforcing prison privatization, rather than disapproving. For instance, companies such as IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing are implicitly utilizing prison labor for their earnings (Davis 2000). Furthermore, if it were not sufficient to envisage the United State’s underground business, Immigration Detention Centers have been in additionally introduced into the economy. Uniquely, Immigration Detention Centers serve as further implicit system in the United States, which brings supplementary millions of dollars to the president of CCA and the GEO group. What the privatization of detention does exceptionally well, however, is to promote the commercialization of detention and the production of a commodity—the detainee (Doty, Wheatley 2013:433). Altogether, the privatization of prisons can definitely be summarized of as the title of Smith and Hattery article, “If We Build It They Will Come” (2007). That is to say, the more prisons that the United State’s allows to be constructed, the more individuals it needs to occupy them, which is no other than minorities. Given these points, research has delivered the major consequences that minorities have endured due to this complex and difficult phenomenon.