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Prison for Profit: Modern Day Slavery

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Prison for Profit: Modern Day Slavery
Prison for Profit: Modern Day Slavery Many people don’t possess realistic vision on today’s prison system. I have this knowledge because I had a chance to experience it for months while serving a sentence for Trafficking of Marijuana. We are often given the impression that prisons are full of bad people such as rapists and murders. This is a huge misconception. Unfortunately, most of America’s prison population (which happens to be the largest in the world) is non-violent drug offenders being used as a modern day slave force. Often times these inmates are low security offenders. These are the offenders who were caught with small amounts of narcotics or caught committing crimes to support their personal drug habit. More often than not, they are placed, with minimal supervision, on your local courthouse or highway patrol office to do jobs such as lawn maintenance and janitorial duties. The average person thinks nothing of this. With the potential threat of prison privatization lurking you may one day be the person behind the fence, working a job for free and risking injury to yourself with no health insurance. The problem with privatization of prisons is that it is a “for-profit” industry. Who is to say that if they make a profit for incarceration and free labor that they won’t find new way to incarcerate citizens and non-citizens of the United States? The modern private prison business first established itself publicly in 1984 when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was awarded a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. This marked the first time that any government in the country had contracted out the complete operation of a jail to a private operator. In 1985, CCA gained further public attention when it offered to take over the entire state prison system of Tennessee for $200 million. The bid was ultimately defeated due to strong opposition from public employees and the skepticism of the state legislature. Despite


Cited: www.corrections.com The Connection . Copyright 1996 – 2013 Thuber. The New Yorker Dec 2010 "Putting an end to private prisons. (News)." U.S. Catholic July 2003: 10. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. Abramsky, Sasha. "Incarceration, Inc: private prisons thrive on cheap labor and the hunger of job-starved towns." The Nation 19 July 2004: 22. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. Brickner, Michael, and Shakyra Diaz. "Prisons for profit: incarceration for sale." Human Rights Summer 2011: 13+. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.
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