The Prison Industrial Complex
The Prison Industrial Complex or the PIC is used to describe the overlapping interest of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problem.
The American prison system is extremely prevalent in modern society. In fact, while the United States represents about 5 percent of the worlds population, it houses around 25 percent of the worlds prisoners.
A large portion of American prisoners is a minority that is systematically targeted by their race. In fact, there are more African Americans in jail today, than there were slaves in 1850. The prison system is a huge political issue that every citizen should be concerned with. It is extremely expensive to run prisons and our government spends tens of billions of our taxes to pay for prisons and their inhabitants. The average inmate costs the government $24,000 per year. With over 2 million inmates today, that is a lot of money. Somewhat surprisingly, many detention centers are not being operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. Who make money off of keeping humans in cells?
Private prison corporations spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying politicians for stricter criminal laws, funding, building permits and more. In return, the corporations get government funding along with a steady supply of inmate customers. Where the real money is however, is prison labor. According to Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100 percent of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, bags and canteens. Prison workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services, along with many other manufacturing services. The prison workers are often not compensated or paid mere dollars an hour for this grouling work while the prison corporations reap huge profits.
In the past thirty years, the violent crime rate has fallen almost three fold while incarceration rate has grown exponentially higher. How can this be explained? The answer is actually quite simple. The introduction of the war on drugs by the Raegan administration has durastically harshened the punishments for petty drug crime that unequally targets minorities. From 1992 to 2002, the average time served in prison for drug offenses increased by 31 percent from 32.7 months to 42.9 months. Many people would say that the private prison corporations are just taking advantage of a problem that already exists. In reality however, the corporations lobbying groups spend huge amounts of money so that state and federal law makers approve laws that will make them even larger amounts of money.
A huge impact that prison corporations have, is that it shifts the focus on making money, and not rehabilitation. There are many public reports that state that a large portion of private prisons are extremely overcrowded, understaffed and exist in terrible conditions. Rehabilitation programs have been drastically cut to save money, so the prisons provide little to no help for the prisoners who wish to learn and better their life. In fact, prison corporations have a direct incentive to not help the prisoners at all. The corporations see the inmates as customers, in order to keep making money, they must reply on repeat customers. If the prisons provide inmates with programs that reduce the likelihood of them repeating an offense, they are losing a customer. The interests of the corporations go against the whole idea of Prisons as a rehabilitative institution.