The Prison Industry Provides Plenty of Cheap Labor for Multinational Corporations in Collusion with Government

Debtors' Prisons Making a Comeback in the U.S.?

June 1, 2011

RTAmerica - If owing money isn't a criminal offense anymore in America, why are so many debtors being sent to prison? People need to pay the bills, says New Deal 2.0's Bryce Covert, but throwing them in jail won't solve anything. As Americans use credit cards to charge food and clothing as prices go higher and wages only drop, they need to be punished for being fraudulent, says Covert—but not by putting them in prison.



In the late 1960's, the US began to expand the powers of law enforcement agencies around the country, generating by the 1970's an unprecedented reliance on incarceration to treat its social, political, economic and mental health problems. By calling new acts crimes, and by increasing the severity of sentencing for other acts, US citizens witnessed a "prison boom." Soon, prison overcrowding surpassed prison construction budgets, and politicians that had promised to build new prisons could no longer build them. In the mid-1980's, fifteen years of massive and unprecedented growth within the US prison system hit a snag -- it ran out of money. When the state wants to build a new prison, it traditionally asks the voters to approve the cost through a bond issue. But this time, voters throughout the country began to say no. So many turned to private investment, to venture capital, both to fund new prison projects and to run the prisons themselves for costs around $30 to $60 per bed, per day. This began what we know today as the for-profit, PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY. In 1970 the U.S. had 280,000 prisoners; today that number has risen to over 2.5 million. [The Private Prisons, CorrectionsProject.com]

See: Defense Contractors Using Cheap Prison Labor Rather Than Highly Paid, Unionized Workers
See: Human Trafficking in America's Private Prisons
See: Kids for Cash: Private Prisons Operate for Profit