Private prisons make money by incarcerating Amerikans!
WASHINGTON (PNN) - March 11, 2013 - How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Amerikans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money? In Amerika today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly.
Overall, the Fascist Police States of Amerika has approximately 25% of the entire global prison population even though it only has 5% of the total global population. The FPSA has the highest incarceration rate on the entire globe by far, and no nation in the history of the world has ever locked up more of its own citizens than it has.
Are we really such a cesspool of filth and decay that we need to lock up so many of our own people? Or are there some other factors at work? Could part of the problem be that we have allowed companies to lock up men and women in cages for profit?
The two largest private prison companies combined to bring in close to $3 billion in revenue in 2010, and the largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade. Putting Amerikans behind bars has become very big business, and those companies have been given a perverse incentive to push for even more Amerikans to be locked up. It is a system that is absolutely teeming with corruption, and it is going to get a lot worse unless someone does something about it.
One of the keys to success in the private prison business it to get politicians to vote your way. That is why the big private prison companies spend so much money on lobbying and campaign contributions.
Three of the largest private prison companies have spent approximately $45 million combined on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade. Would they be spending so much money if those companies did not believe that it was getting results?
Just look at what has happened to the FPSA prison population over the past several decades. Prior to 1980, there were virtually no private prisons in the FPSA. But since that time, we have seen the overall prison population and the private prison population absolutely explode.
For example, between 1990 and 2009 the number of Amerikans in private prisons grew by about 1600%.
Overall, the FPSA prison population more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2007.
So something has definitely changed.
Not that it is wrong to put people in prison when they commit crimes. Of course not; and right now violent crime is rapidly rising in many of our largest cities. When people commit violent crimes they need to be removed from the streets.
But when you put those criminals into the hands of private companies that are just in it to make a buck, the potential for abuse is enormous.
For example, when auditors visited one private prison in Texas, they “got so much fecal matter on their shoes they had to wipe their feet on the grass outside.”
The prisoners were literally living in their own manure.
How would you feel if a member of your own family was locked up in such a facility?
There are endless stories of abuse in private prisons. One private prison company reportedly charges inmates $5.00 a minute to make phone calls but only pays them $1.00 a day to work.
