Private Prison Case Study

The US Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. After spending $5.2 billion on prison construction over the past fifteen years, California now has not only the largest but also the most overcrowded prison system in the United States. The state Department of Corrections estimates that it will need to spend an additional $6.1 billion on prisons over the next decade just to maintain the current level of overcrowding. At least 37

Private prisons receive a guaranteed large amount of money for what it costs to maintain each prisoner. There are about 18 different corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states in America. There are two major large corporations; Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, and together they control 75%. The CCA has an ultra-modern day prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia; where five guards on dayshift and two on night shift watch over 750 prisoners. In those prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for their “good behavior,” but for any infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost “good behavior time” at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons. The rise of prison privatization began in the 1980s, under the government control of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush Sr.; then reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street’s stocks were selling like hotcakes. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The CCA’s highest-paying private prison is in Tennessee, where the prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At rates like these, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. In

The prison industrial complex has also been said to include private businesses that benefit from the exploitation of the prison labor; prison mechanisms remove "unexploitable" labor, or so-called "underclass", from society and redefine it as highly exploitable cheap labor. As the prison population grows, a rising rate of incarceration feeds small and large businesses such as providers of furniture, clothes, food, transportation, and medical services, construction and communication firms. Sixteen percent of the United States 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness while being locked up. Thousands of the inmates in the United States prison are HIV-positive; thousands of other prisoners carry hepatitis C. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners has committed non-violent offenses. Since 1991, the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20% while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 %. In 1997; inmates in California prisons assaulted 2,583 staff members. An increase because of imprisonment of people who have committed nonviolent offenses. Instead of community service, fines, or drug treatment are considered as the prison term, by far the most expensive form of