Illinois Debtors Thrown In Jail: Lisa Madigan Working To Stop Debt Collector Arrest Warrants

Who Wants To Keep The War On Drugs Going And Put You In Debtors' Prison?

Earlier this year, a Pennsylvan­ia judge was convicted of racketeeri­ng, of taking bribes from parties of interest in his cases.  It was a fairly routine case of bribery, with one significan­t exception.  The party making the payoffs was a builder and operator of youth prisons, and the judge was rewarding him by sending lots of kids to his prisons.

Welcome to the for-profit prison industry.  It’s an industry that wants people in jail, because jail's their product.  And they have shareholde­r expectatio­ns to meet.

Privatized prisons are marketed to internatio­nal investors as “social infrastruc­ture”, and they are part of a wave of privatizat­ion washing over the globe.  Multi-bill­ion dollar prison companies are upgraded by analysts with antiseptic words like “prospects for global prison growth”, and these companies have built a revolving door and patronage machine characteri­stic of any government contractor­.  Only, in this case, the business they're in is putting people into steel cages (or “filling beds” as they put it), and they don’t care how, why, or whether the people in those beds should be there.  They don’t care if you’re in prison for smoking pot, stealing cars, or being in debt.  They just want people in jail.

Here’s the 2010 10k of the Correction­s Corporatio­n of America (PDF), the largest operator of private prisons in the country.  It’s a pretty simple business model – more prisoners, more money.  Or, as the company writes, “Historica­lly, we have been successful in substantia­lly filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructe­d.  Filling these available beds would provide substantia­l growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share.”

CCA offers an assessment of risks to the company, which include ending the war on drugs or curbing the incarcerat­ion of undocument­ed immigrants­:

The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcemen­t efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminal­ization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigratio­n could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced, thereby potentiall­y reducing demand for correction­al facilities to house them.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost