4 ms·

Prison in the US isn't about punishment or rehabilitation. It's about money. Incarceration is big business.

• rayiner 13y ago
  It's not. Only a small percentage of prisons are for profit (http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...), and our tendency to incarcerate people dates back to long before we had for profit prisons. Our incarceration rate is mostly a backlash against desegregation. It's mostly because of the war on drugs, which is at its base a war on black people.
  • knieveltech 13y ago
    "Only a tiny percentage of prisons are for profit" Can you source that?
    • rayiner 13y ago
      http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g... 128k out of 1.6m, or 8%. Graph of the incarcerated population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-.... The prison population started exploding in 1980 with the drug war and the war on immigration, but for-profit prisons had less than 10,000 prisoners as of 1990. It's a lagging effect--the for-profit prisons are sprouting up because we put so many people in prison, not the other way around.
  • mjn 13y ago
    In California at least the prison-guard union does have a significant role, which is a kind of profit motive. They successfully campaigned for the three-strikes law, for example, and have been a strong influence on politicians for decades. I agree the war on drugs is a much bigger factor.
    • protomyth 13y ago
      Looking at what bills the Prison Guards union gets behind or tries to stop, it is a very big amount of money. Corporations are not the only ones with a profit motive.