Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration [Hardcover]

Tara Herivel (Editor), Paul Wright (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2008

The astonishing range of industries, corporations, and individuals profiting from the imprisonment of over 2.3 million Americans.

"Positive: With the baby boomlet demographics, we foresee increasing demand for juvenile [incarceration] services. Negative:...it is often difficult to maintain the occupancy rates required for profitability."—from a report produced for the private prison industry by investment analysts First Analysis Securities Corporation

Locking up 2.3 million people isn't cheap. Each year federal, state, and local governments spend over $185 billion annually in tax dollars to ensure that one out of every 137 Americans is imprisoned. Prison Profiteers looks at the private prison companies, investment banks, churches, guard unions, medical corporations, and other industries and individuals that benefit from this country's experiment with mass imprisonment. It lets us follow the money from public to private hands and exposes how monies formerly designated for the public good are diverted to prisons and their maintenance. Find out where your tax dollars are going as you help to bankroll the biggest prison machine the world has ever seen.

Contributors include: Judy Greene on private prison giants Geo (formerly Wackenhut) and CCA; Anne-Marie Cusac on who sells electronic weapons to prison guards; David Lapido on how private corporations profit from prison labor; Wil S. Hylton on the largest prison health care provider; Ian Urbina on how prison labor supports the military; Kirsten Levingston on the privatization of public defense; Jennifer Gonnerman on the costs to neighborhoods from which prisoners are removed; Kevin Pranis on the banks and brokerage houses that finance prison building; and Silja Talvi on the American Correctional Association as a tax-funded lobbyist for professional prison bureaucracies.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In their follow-up to 2002's Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor, prisoner rights activists Herivel and Wright, with 16 other contributors, follow the money to an astonishing constellation of prison administrators and politicians working in collusion with private parties to maximize profits at the expense of taxpayers, community health and, of course, the 2.3 million inmates nationwide. The overarching narrative, laid out clearly in the opening article by Judy Greene, finds a system increasingly dominated by select, minimally accountable private companies for whom profitability depends on the promise of more and longer convictions. As such, investment in treatment programs, education and family assistance is diverted to organizations delivering substandard food and "health care" that allows hepatitis C to reach levels one doctor compares to "the Dark Ages with the plague"; corruption runs all the way down to prison phone contracts. Cruelty and administrative stupidity come in many forms, claim the authors; guards earning $5.77 per hour beat the young inmates of a Louisiana juvenile facility while abuse schemes and political back-scratching trump efforts to police them, as evidenced by the growth of industry tradeshows and companies (such as International Taser). This is lucid, eye-opening reading for anyone interested in American justice.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Prison is big business, from contracts for construction and food and health service to transportation and providing guards. Prisoner rights advocates Herivel and Wright offer a collection of essays examining every aspect of incarceration and economics, from the effect on rural economies (jobs and higher population counts for the census) to urban economies (the social effect on poor neighborhoods with an overabundance of men rotating in and out of the prison system). Banks and brokerage houses provide the financing, and contractors provide everything from Tasers to aspirin. Lobbyists supporting prison-related industries influence federal and state governments with an eye toward profits more than criminal justice. Contributors analyze the exploitation of prison labor to support the military and the effect on free-market interests. Beyond the economics, contributors examine the “commodification” of prison culture, including the influence on hip-hop music and linkages between faith-based programs and prison privatization. This is an important analysis of a troubling social trend that has not been widely publicized. --Vernon Ford

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 323 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (January 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595581677
• ISBN-13: 978-1595581679
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,057,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Important, February 28, 2008

By 

sabonis (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration (Hardcover)

In his 2005 article "Correctional HMOs and the Coming Prison Plague," author Will S. Hylton writes, "It occurs to me now that prisons are designed for keeping secrets, for holding inside not just men [and women] but also their lives and the details of those lives."

In Prison Profiteers, Tara Herivel and Paul Wright chronicle hundreds of instances where prisons not only kept their secrets close, but let corrupt politicians and huge corporations make off with millions by doing so. The authors compile essays and articles dealing with the private prison industry from every angle -- mapping prison costs in low-income urban neighborhoods, the effect of prison construction on small-town America, the mega-corporations that run what passes for health care inside prisons and the politicians that shape laws to help themselves and their rich friends, with little care about those people who actually pass through the system. The bottom line in every article seems to be the bottom line. Much more energy is spent by public officials flossing the image of being "tough on crime" for public support so they can cut deals that will supposedly lessen budget deficits or fill their pockets than create actual rehabilitation services or safety within prisons.

One of the most powerful advocacy pieces is Jennifer Gonnerman's article, "Million Dollar Blocks: Neighborhood Costs of America's Prison Boom." It looks at how much money is spent keeping prisoners behind bars, per person, added up per city block. The total is often over one million dollars for one block, mainly in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, where people -- usually people of color -- have little access to education and good jobs, and there is no other financial investment in their communities except keeping them in prison. By mapping these areas within cities, activists hope to show legislators that the money would be better invested in education, job placement programs and other opportunities for residents.

Some of the most riveting essays were those that read less "academic" and were more personal accounts of investigative journalism, such as Hylton's piece on Correctional Medical Services, where he interviewed various personalities involved with the secrecy of prison health care. He opens the article with a visit to a prisoner with grotesque disfigurements due to health officials' lack of / botched care for his hepatitis, who dies only a week after his visit, reportedly from "unknown causes." He examines the numbers of inmates who have hepatitis -- which is highly contagious throughout a person's life -- and asks what is going to happen as they are continually un-treated and then leave prison with the disease. A pattern emerges as he talks to local prison activists, ex-nurses and an evasive public relations rep -- there is no real accountability for CMS's actions, beyond an occasional successful lawsuit. A nurse even admits as much: "We have no accountability. If I deny care, that's it. You have no recourse."

Herivel and Wright have put together an excellent compendium covering the numerous ways profit is made on the backs of prisoners. This is a highly recommended read, for not just prison activists but all concerned about the state of the "justice" in this country, the convoluted priorities of many public officials and what a number of local activists, academics and journalists are trying to do to combat these corporations.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prison Profiteers is a well written and concise book, March 16, 2008

By 

Gorilla Convict Publications (Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration (Hardcover)

Prison Profiteers is a well written and concise book that outlines and details the spiraling costs of incarceration today. The costs are many and more then they seem as future generations will be impacted by what is going on now with the Draconian sentences and policies being adhered too. Prisons run for profit, this is American right? A very good book.

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone interested in preserving human rights and defeating slavery, October 28, 2011

By 

S. Kyle - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration (Paperback)

This book is a compilation of articles written by no less than 15 respected authors. Chock full of statistics, the well sourced articles cover a range of topics related to the mass incarceration industry. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what is driving the unprecedented growth of the American prison system.