Hello everyone! I apologize as my work is in a very rough state as or right now, I find myself struggling as to what I should write. This issue is immensely complex and I want to be as thorough and accurate as possible. As you can tell I am not the best of writers but I would appreciate some help with what I could add, edit and revise. My topic is on the prison industrial complex and how the public is affected by it, obviously my focus has been towards minorities since they seem to be the ones most affected by it. I also wrote some background on why the law has currently reached this stage, and at what time. My first language is not English as you may be able to tell, I find myself using "The" at the beginning of every sentence, or other repeated articles. Feel free to be as honest as possible as I do believe that even though criticism can be harsh at times, it is also the most constructive. Thank you for your time.
Modern Day Slavery
Although we think of slavery and prejudice based on race as something of the past, it is something that we are still seeing today. Slavery was something of a means of control and economic progress at the price of the lives of a certain group of individuals. If we were to see something like this in today's day and age, what would people say? How would we react? Would we see it as people in the past once saw it and simply do nothing? Or would we be part of the group that would stand against this injustice? Most people would say that they would be the part of the group that would stand against it, there is no place for such a thing in the modern world, we have move past the barbaric practices that were slavery and racism. However, slavery has not been left entirely in the past, instead it changed, evolved, and has been framed in such a way that it is accepted.
As of 2022, there are currently about 90,873 people held in a private prison in America (Budd), which is approximately 8% of the total population in the prison system .According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, anything larger than 500 employees would be considered a large company, something stable and earning a decent amount of revenue. And if we are going to talk about revenue, the two largest for-profit prison institutions made 3.5 billion dollars as of 2015 (Gotsch). These institutions operate as businesses, with the prisoners being the laborers who have no other choice but to work, and the prison facing no repercussions since no one will advocate for a prisoner. Prisons need to provide food, housing, clothing and water; if you know how businesses work, there will be cut costs wherever they can to maximize profit. You do not have to look to far to find the type of housing and food inmates are provided, simply looking on the internet you can see they are barely fed, clothed with cheap jumpsuits, and multiple bunks in a single room.
How was this accomplished? Has it been like this since the beginning? Are all prisons for profit? No, as explained earlier, only 8% of the total prison population is in a for-profit prison. Most prisons are federally regulated and funded, with a lot of states not allowing private institutions to profit from inmates. That was the case for all prisons prior to 1984, when the first private prison opened due to overcrowding in public institutions because of the War on Drugs, creating a necessity for new prisons to be built. New laws with harsh punishments created the saturation of prisons, in response to this, the government decided to facilitate the building of new prisons via private institutions. Public funding created private institutions, large corporations bring in large amounts of revenue and the average citizen's tax dollars foot the bill.
The laws created in response to the war on drugs created longer sentences for repeat offenders, as well as leaving a permanent mark on your record. A juvenile criminal is almost guaranteed to go back into the prison system, at least 80% of convicted juvenile criminals are convicted of another crime (Durose). The obvious answer as to why this happens is, "a criminal will always be a criminal", which could be the case; however, once you complete your sentence and are able to go back to regular life, you would be hard pressed to find a job. With no money to support yourself, and no legal way to obtain money, chances are you will go back to what you were doing before. That is when these laws come into effect. The three-strike law makes it so repeat offenders are punished harder, until you are unable to leave the system. This all causes a spiraling effect for someone that committed a crime, you commit a crime because you are unable to get a job, go to prison, and go out with the same problems with a harder time to find employment.
Most of the population, if asked how they felt about these punitive laws, would be dismissive or supportive of them. Public perception of the inmates is that of violent criminals, cartel members, killers, school shooters, etc. While that is true, the grand majority is not within that category. Once again, the war on drugs will be brought up, a high number of inmates within prisons are first time drug offenders. Private prisons require vacancies to be filled, if not, prisons are operated at a loss, creating an incentive for people to be prosecuted with harsher sentences, such as the previously mentioned drug addict population. Without proper treatment, once again, they are highly likely to continue using narcotics, going back to prison, and if it is not resolved, staying there permanently. Prisons would still not have an incentive to treat their inmates, they would be losing their workforce.
All this was at some point stopped, for profit institutions were not allowed to continue using prisoners as labor. This was changed under the Trump administration in 2017, allowing once more for for-profit prisons to continue operating as they once were. It was changed once more, private prisons would not be allowed to use inmates as workers, under the requirement that they were not U.S. citizen. As you may see, this creates a loophole, where there is now a pivoting to what population they are targeting. They were no longer utilizing prisons, instead using immigration detention centers, which casually coincides with the "immigration crisis" the US is currently facing. Furthermore, detainees in these centers are being held for years on end before getting sent back to their country, which the people that are against immigration would advocate for. Prison industry leaders, such as the CCA, control 49% of the immigration detention centers, as opposed to the 8% of the regular prisons (Kilgore). With such a large investment being put in these centers, corporations like this have a need to continue lobbying for harsher and more punitive immigration laws, which the US is already known for.
All this works under the assumption that somehow, utilizing prisoners, law offenders, immigrants, for public service is wrong. You committed a crime against citizens of the US, it is only right to do a public service. The issue is that this is not the case, tax dollars are utilized to pay for the prisons, publicly funded, with private interests. The other issue begins when you are targeting specific demographics to fill vacancies. Its main targets being a population that is already at a disadvantage, is a minority, or people living within a certain neighborhood.
