They profit rural state and congressional representatives, who get to add a few hundred or thousand non voting (in every state but Maine and Vermont) people to their district. They profit corrections officers' unions, who just in California will spend more money lobbying for longer sentences and donating to tough-on-crime regressives like Kamala Harris than the three biggest private prisons do nationwide. They don't profit shareholders, sure.īut they profit prosecutors who run for election on their conviction rates, 95% of which are plea-bargained. Private prisons hold about 8% of our prisoners.īut even our public prisons are for-profit. If they were banned, it's sometimes suggested, everything would be fine. One thing a lot of people who only have a passing familiarity with the US criminal justice system misunderstand is the role of private prisons.
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