incarceration in America is a growth industry - an alleged solution to high unemployment, crumbled schools, societal neglect, low wages, and an eroding social contract, trafficking human beings for profit in all penal facilities because private suppliers service them.
They include a growing private gulag, prisons for profit with nearly a score of corporations running dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of prisoners. In fact, privatized prisons are expected to increase sharply over the next decade, given America's addiction to incarcerate and let corporate prisons do more.
Outlawed a century ago, they're back and booming, a solution to budget-strapped states. Today, nearly 10% of US prisons and jails are private, dominated by two major firms - Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut).
At yearend 2010, America's prison population topped 2.4 million, including federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US territories, and numbers held by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In addition, over seven million more are under correctional supervision, and over 13 million pass through US prisons and jails annually. About 70% are for nonviolent offenses. Nearly half of those are drug-related. In 1980, 40,000 drug offenders were imprisoned. It's now over 500,000, victimized by unfair "war on drugs" laws.
Since 1970, America's prison population grew eightfold. It hasn't been for more crime. It's because of:
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