The Prison Industrial Complex

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. With just 5% of the world's population, the United States contains one quarter of the entire world's inmates. How can it be that in the "land of the free", we see fit to imprison such a large portion of our population? The short answer is that under capitalism the only freedom that really matters is the freedom to make a profit.

The Prison Industrial Complex is the name given to a system in which prison ownership and management are increasingly being transferred to the private sector. In the same way that the privatization of the war industry has made the invasion of other countries an extremely profitable endeavour the privatization of prisons has had a similar effect on the penal system. The massive shift toward deregulation and privatization since the Reagan era has lead to an explosion in the United States' prison population. As per usual the federal government acted as a tool for corporate interests and enacted various legislation leading to increased convictions and longer sentences for non-violent offenses, such as drug possession.

Many of the draconian measures being taken by certain states against undocumented workers can be directly attributed to the influence of corportations with interests in the prison industrial complex. In a recent article in the Guardian, Alex Cabellero pointed out that:

[Alabam's]HB 56, a de facto criminalisation of migration, replaces any sensible immigration policy with the favorite solution these days: let’s put them behind bars– and we might as well make a profit out of it.

Not only will this law supply fresh inmates to private detention centers in the state – like the one operated in Decatur by LCS correctional corporation – but it will also feed an already bloated national private prison system controlled by two major corporations, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) and the GEO group, which have a combined profit of more than $5bn a year. CCA, for example, runs the largest facility in the nation in neighboring Georgia and may potentially take a good portion of the detainees in Alabama. Charging $200 a night, this is an opportunity they’ll jump at.

Please join the Utah Valley University chapter of the Revolutionary Students Union this Thursday, January 26 at 8pm in room SC206a for a lecture by Victor Puertas on this topic and to learn how to fight back against the Prison Industrial Complex.
Make sure to check out the National Prison Divestment Campaign as well.