Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog: Private Prisons Trample on American Values: An Educator’s Researched Based Perspective

What is a for profit company? “A business or other organization whose primary goal is making money (a profit), as opposed to a non profit organization which focuses a goal such as helping the community and is concerned with money only as much as necessary to keep the organization operating”

So, if this company is not selling its services or product, it goes out of business. But what if it product is prisoners? That means in order to make money it would need its jails to be full; all the time. Remember, the number one goal of a company is to maximize profits for its owners.

“The Corrections Corporation of America launched the era of private prisons in 1983, when it opened an immigration detention center in an former motel in Houston, Texas. Today the Nashville-based company houses more than 66,000 inmates, making it the country’s second-largest private prison company. In 2015, it reported $1.9 billion in revenue and made more than $221 million in net income—more than $3,300 for each prisoner in its care”.

“CCA and other prison companies have written “occupancy guarantees” into their contracts, requiring states to pay a fee if they cannot provide a certain number of inmates. Winn Correctional Center was guaranteed to be 96 percent full”.

“The two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States – GEO and Corrections Corporation of America – and their associates have funneled more than $10 million to candidates since 1989 and have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, these private companies have seen their revenue and market share soar”.

These systems do not only get you while you are inside prison, they get you if you have court fines, hallway house, on probation. Once they have you in their system, they make it very difficult for you to get out, and the average working person will end up paying dearly to get out of the system. Over inflated prices for goods, garnishing your paycheck for the privilege of being forced to stay at halfway house instead of being allowed to go home, fines and more fines.

“The Fines and Fees That Keep Former Prisoners Poor” “States and counties have upped the amounts they charge defendants, saddling those getting out of jail with huge amounts of debt they have little hope of paying off”.

“Increasingly, jurisdictions across the country are assessing hefty court fines and fees, called legal financial obligations (LFOs), on defendants, requiring them to pay thousands of dollars or face more jail time, according to Alexes Harris, the author of A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions for the Poor. Harris talked to one woman who was a victim of domestic violence and spent eight years in the prison system for shooting the father of her son. She’d been assessed $33,000 in LFOs, but 13 years after her conviction, despite minimum monthly payments she made, interest had brought her debt to $72,000”.

“Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”

“Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”

“Half of the world's prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia”. “Prison rates in the US are the world's highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia, the rate is 581”.

Criminal justice reform in the United States would be one of the greatest things ever for human rights because, it is not enough to have laws of protection, what is needed is equal laws and true equal protection under the law no matter what your social status (or perceived status).

The state of incarceration in the United States, especially with the inclusion of the private prison system, is effrontery to American values, and all those who claim to love freedom, the constitution, and the United States of America, should be outraged.