Prison System

Abstract

The paper begins by analyzing the demographics of the US prison population and outlining the rise of the prison system as well as policies of expansion in various states. The paper then makes a thorough analysis of the various ways that private businesses or corporations benefit from the prison system and examines the way in which crime has been politicized to the benefit of politicians and big business. The paper concludes with some suggestions for prison system reform.

Overview

Growth of the Prison System. President Richard Nixon began a War on Drugs during his presidency with a formal announcement. Ronald Reagan first developed harsh drug policies at the state level as governor of California, after which he became US president and significantly expanded Nixon's War on Drugs as a federal policy. Smith and Hattery point out that the War on Drugs instituted four major policy changes that directly increased the prison population:

• Longer sentences;
• Mandatory minimums;
• Some drug offenses were moved from the misdemeanor category to the felony category; and
• The institution of the "Three Strikes You're Out" policy (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 5).

California demonstrates what became a national trend in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that caused America to far outstrip other countries in number of incarcerations. California governors of the 1980s and 1990s strongly encouraged more prison construction and helped set a national trend. The California legislature enacted more than 400 pieces of legislation that increased criminal penalties, and ensured the state would need even more prisons (Simon, 2007, p. 494). California continued increasing the number of prisons into the early 2000s. Saskal (2006) reports that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008 called for the issuance of $8.7 billion of lease revenue bonds to expand the capacity of California's overfilled prison system. About that time, there were several lawsuits pending over poor, overcrowded conditions in the system, and federal judges were close to intervening (Saskal, 2006, p. 1). By 2006, the number of inmates in California prisons had peaked at 173,942 (Carson & Golinelli, 2013), and Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in response (“Schwarzenegger v. Plata,” 2010). Poor health conditions led to lawsuits that eventually went before the Supreme Court, which ruled that they constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and that prisoner release was necessary to remedy the situation (“Schwarzenegger v. Plata,” 2010). Subsequently, under Governor Jerry Brown’s California Public Safety Realignment program, the state sought to better align the incarceration rate with the rate of violent crime, giving nonviolent criminals alternative sentences such as mental health treatment, drug rehabilitation programs, community service, or house arrest with GPS tracking (“The Challenges of ‘Realignment,” 2012). As a result, the prison population decreased to 134,211 in 2012, a drop of nearly 10 percent from the preceding year. Nonetheless, prison crowding continued, and the Brown administration looked to prisons run by private corporations GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America to further alleviate the problem without releasing additional prisoners (St. John, 2013). In many ways, California’s history of high incarceration rates and attempts to rectify the problems exemplify the state of the prison system in the United States, as explained below.

The result of transitioning to a punitive approach to crime—and particularly the severe laws on nonviolent crimes such as drug sales or use—is that the US far outstrips every other country in the world in per capita incarcerations. The US incarcerates a much higher proportion of its population than Russia or even China, a country that Smith and Hattery (2007) note has incarceration practices that are "frequently the target of investigations and reports by human rights watch groups such as Amnesty International" (p. 275). By June 2023, the World Prison Brief reported the US had the highest total number of incarcerated individuals in the world at 1,767,200—the sixth highest rate per capita in the world. However, despite these alarming statistics, it is noteworthy that both the prison population total and the prison population rate in the US declined between 2018 and 2023 (World Prison Brief, 2023).

Additionally, Frederickson (2008) observes that "the costs of the American penal system are astonishing." Bureau of Prison statistics show that the average inmate in a federal prison cost more than thirty-six thousand dollars per year in 2017. By 2020, states spent a combined total of $55 billion on corrections, the majority of which went to running prisons. Total spending in the US per incarcerated individual in 2020 averaged $45,771, but each state's cost per incarcerated individual varied widely. Mississippi reported spending around $18,000 per individual, while Wyoming reported spending $135,978 per individual ("How much do," 2023). To reduce this cost, studies show education is a powerful resource. For every dollar spent on education for incarcerated individuals, an estimated four to five dollars are saved on reincarceration costs (Gibbons & Ray, 2021).

Incarceration & Crime Rates. Though prison populations began rapidly increasing in the early 1990s, but there was no increase in violent crimes. In fact, there was a significant decrease. The rate of violent crime dropped steadily from a high of 523 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1999 to a low of 361.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014. It climbed again to 386.6 per 100,000 in 2016 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019), and by 2021, the total reached 395.7 cases per 100,000 of the population (Horton, 2022). Clear provides specific information about the tenuous relationship between incarceration figures and crime rates:

"…a 500 percent generation-long growth in imprisonment has had little impact on crime. Broadly speaking, crime rates are about what they were in 1973, though they have fluctuated dramatically over the 33-year time span since then. Beginning in 1973, crime rates went up into the early 1980s, went down for a few years at the end of that decade, went back up again, and then experienced a lengthy downward trend starting in the late 1990s. Prison populations, on the other hand, have risen every year since 1990" (Clear, 2007, p. 613).

The Prison Population. The World Prison Brief estimated that 1,767,200 million Americans were serving prison sentences in local, state, and federal prisons by the end of 2020. In 2023, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported, non-Hispanic Blacks constituted approximately 38.5 percent of the prison population, though they made up only around 13 percent of the total US population. Examining the statistics by gender, Black men represent the majority of the male prison population; indeed, the arrest rate for Black men was 6,109 per 100,000 individuals compared to 2,795 per 100,000 for White men in 2023. This indicates an imbalance in American culture—a combination of its socioeconomic, legislative, and judicial systems—is causing a significant disproportion in the composition of our prison population ("Race and ethnicity," 2023).

Spear (2006) observes that the United States incarcerates a disproportionately large number of poor, uneducated Americans, and many of them are Blacks. The Sentencing Project (2019) also reports that Black men born in 2001 have a one in three chance of being incarcerated during their lifetimes, as compared to a one in six chance for Hispanic men and a one in seventeen chance for White men of the same age. Spear observes that the "mentally disturbed, lacking support in the community, gravitate toward the prison system, where they will find little help" (2006, p. 22). Clear (2007) observes that people who go to prison "come disproportionately from a handful of neighborhoods, impoverished places where schools are bad, the labor market weak, and housing inadequate" (p. 615). He then concludes that the “social effects of incarceration are hyperconcentrated among young, poor, Black men and urban Black communities” (Clear, 2007).

Smith and Hattery offer another interesting statistic and comparison. They pointed out that, in 2006, 450,000 of the more than 2 million inmates were serving sentences in state and federal prisons for nonviolent drug offenses. In 2020, of the 2.2 million incarcerated individuals, nearly half were arrested on nonviolent offences. This number represents more prisoners than the European Union had in prison for all crimes combined (Hayes & Barnhorst, 2020). Smith and Hattery note that Black males represented only 9 percent of the prison population in the 1970s, but after harsher drug law sentencing came into effect, the population climbed to 62 percent representation by the mid-2000s (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 22).

The US jail and prison population continued to rise sharply in the twenty-first century. Spear and other researchers concur that a "get-tough" legal approach to the distribution and use of illicit drugs is the primary cause for the increase. Spear notes that many of the prisoners who are there for drug offenses actually have no record of violent offenses; that there are other expanding groups in the prison population. The rise of "tough-on-crime" laws has allowed far more juveniles to be tried in an adult court at much younger ages than previously, and according to the Sentencing Project, these adult sentences that are imposed on minors are "unduly severe." As discussed below, the conditions in juvenile prisons are also unduly severe. Spear notes that the female prison population has also increased significantly and comments that this situation usually leaves their children with a family member or the children end up as wards of the state. This of course weakens or perhaps destroys the family structure of the imprisoned (Spear, 2006, p. 23). To summarize, the prison population is mostly poor and uneducated, predominantly Black, and increasingly consisting of women, children, and the mentally disturbed. The biggest cause of this increase is the changes in drug laws.

Further Insights

The Prison Industrial Complex. The private business sector benefits in various ways from increased incarcerations, and this should be examined more closely. Smith and Hattery note that many Fortune 500 companies have taken advantage of the cheap labor resources available through prison populations. The use of prison labor allows corporations to save significantly on labor costs and thereby increase their profits "much like plantations, ship builders, and other industries did during the 200 plus years of slavery in the United States" (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 11). Smith and Hattery aptly refer to the prison system as the "prison industrial complex (PIC)," and they argue that the capitalist economy and the prison system that characterizes the PIC create a symbiotic system. Prisons only make money when the prison beds are occupied, and "the more prisons provide labor for corporations, the more prisons will be built." Their conclusion is alarming. They propose that "the PIC and its attendant industries contribute to the increased rates of incarceration in the US and the continued exploitation of labor, primarily African American labor" (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 11). It makes basic economic sense that, when there are empty prison cells, the prison loses money, and "prisons beds"—as industry insiders refer to their economic units—need full capacity for optimal profit. The authors argue that the PIC is a self-perpetuating system:

"We must impose harsher and longer sentences and we must continue to funnel inmates into prisons… and this funnel is not being filled with White collar offenders such as Bernie Ebbs (WorldCom), Ken Lay (Enron), or Martha Stewart, but rather by vulnerable, unempowered populations, primarily young, poor, African American men" (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 13).

A change in inmate labor regulations has created a system wherein inmate labor is increasingly subcontracted for a variety of business sectors. Subcontracting companies act as middlemen for many of the largest companies in the United States. The middlemen subcontracting companies that are hired by America's largest companies use prison labor for telemarketing, call service, manufacturing, packaging, and distributing their products, though in some cases there is no middleman and the companies directly outsource to prison labor. Smith and Hattery note that, although Americans are unaware of it, every day they are the beneficiaries of the work done by ten to fifteen prison laborers, and Americans use about thirty products daily that were produced, packaged, or sold out of a prison (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 17). The authors also make an astute observation on the ultimate reach of this economic system by observing "prison industries have truly infiltrated the global market" (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 283).

Prisoners receive a subminimum wage (between 33 cents and 1.41 dollars per hour, according to a 2017 Prison Policy Initiative analysis) and make enormous profits on prison labor (Smith & Hattery, 2007; Fox, 2012). Additional advantages to the use of prison labor, besides the obvious advantage of paying very low wages, are that companies who use prison labor do not have to provide health insurance or vacation benefits, and they need not be concerned about severance pay or layoffs (Smith & Hattery, 2007; Fox, 2012). They can conveniently increase the number of prison workers during peak sales periods and send them back to their cells whenever sales decline (Smith & Hattery, 2007).

Although big companies pay prison workers much less than they pay for workers on the outside, they are not actually reducing the markup to the consumer; of course, they retain the increased profits (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 19). The system thus benefits the wealthier citizens who might own stock in these companies, but it does not help the average American worker or consumer. In fact, evidence suggests that, if anything, the system creates negative effects for the average American worker (Fox, 2012). Smith and Hattery note that the exploitation of inmate labor can cause higher unemployment and lower wages in local communities (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 17).

Corporations & Prisons. Another benefit to the private sector is the outsourcing of both the construction of prisons and the operation and management of those prisons. For example, the publicly-traded Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which builds and staffs prisons, managed an estimated eighty thousand beds across sixty-six facilities in eighteen states and the District of Columbia and employed approximately 14,000 personnel at year-end 2015, according to their US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that year. Private corporations such as CCA not only make high profits on building and operating prisons, they also profit on many outsourcing services, such as food service or other services, and they profit on "leasing" prisoner labor to the multinational corporations in the above-described scenario (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 21). In short, the PIC is booming in spite of the decrease in violent crime between the late 1980s and early 2000s.

After the loosening of the laws that prohibited the direct competition between prisons and free enterprise, some prisons have also begun directly producing their own goods for the mainstream market. For example, an Oregon prison that started out making denim uniforms for all the inmates in the entire Oregon State Prison system has successfully marketed its own denim clothing line. The Prison Blues Garment Factory operates behind barbed wire, and Americans are ordering the prison factory's "Prison Blues"® clothing online (Smith & Hattery, 2007, p. 16). Supporters of the PIC argue that "this is a positive movement in the evolution of prisons because it provides work, it teaches job skills that are transportable, and it allows inmates to earn some money while they are on the inside" (p. 18). Although these arguments are founded in a rehabilitative mentality, we should ask whether the system is actually based on a rehabilitative philosophy or whether it is entirely based on convenient exploitation of prisoners to maximize corporate profits (Smith & Hattery, 2007).

Exploitation & Corruption. Corporate exploitation of prisoners can also occur from the customer end. For example, for years, prisoners paid much higher fees for making collect calls to speak with their families. According to the New York Times, prisons all over the country "goug[ed] inmates and their families when telephone companies started paying legalized kickbacks—called 'commissions'—to the state prison systems for monopoly on the service" ("A Good Call in New York," 2007, Abstract). The state of New York set a national precedent by forcing its corrections department to change its policy of charging prison inmates and their families “more than six times the going rate for collect calls made from prison.” As the article observes, "these schemes place a huge financial burden on inmate families, who tend to be among the poorest in the nation, and who must often choose between paying phone bills and putting food on the table" ("A Good Call in New York," 2007, Abstract). In August 2013, the Federal Communications Commission capped rates at 25 cents per minute for interstate collect calls. Prior to the ruling, inmates and their families could be charged as much as seventeen dollars for a fifteen-minute call (Gamboa, 2013).

There are also many cases of corruption and scandal from corporations operating prisons. For example, the GEO Group, a publicly traded company that runs private prison facilities across the country, has faced repeated accusations of human rights abuses against inmates in its facilities (Dahl, 2008, para. 1). In 2000, the same company was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, and they were sued for "excessive abuse and neglect" of inmates at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center in Jena, Louisiana (Dahl, 2008, para. 5). A scandal involving the same company also occurred in Texas, where a dozen juvenile girls successfully sued the Wackenhut prison, and two Wackenhut employees pleaded guilty to criminal charges of sexual assault. Unfortunately, the girl who initiated the lawsuit committed suicide on the day of the legal settlement ("Locked Inside a Nightmare," 2000, para. 10). Apparently, the company used the strategy of changing its name to escape the bad press and then faced new accusations in Oregon in 2008. Despite that and an $6.5-million-dollar wrongful death suit in Oklahoma, the company continued to operate 135 facilities worldwide and made$2.3 billion in 2018, according to their US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Politics & the Prison System. Simon (2007) notes that our program of

"Mass incarceration threatens to recreate the worst features of post-slavery America while escaping most of the protections provided by the Reconstruction constitutional amendments and the civil rights legacy they produced … young men, and increasingly women, are being shunted into a system whose not so unintended effect is to cast them into a permanently diminished citizenship" (p. 499).

Additionally, our prison system strips the social capital from minority communities by the removal and degradation of their human capital. Simon writes, "It is not difficult to reach the bleak conclusion that the prison has become an engine of social war against some of America's most vulnerable communities" (p. 499).

In other words, the War On Drugs is in reality a politically-based "War on the Poor and Uneducated." Smith and Hattery (2007) note that harsh sentencing guidelines have filled America's prisons with a surprisingly large number of young Black and Hispanic men who are guilty of little more than untreated drug addictions (p. 21). It should be added that socioeconomic status highly influences whether harsh sentencing guidelines are applied to a person's drug addiction. This becomes quite clear if we consider that, with money and connections, an affluent cocaine user will end up in an expensive private rehab center rather than in the prison system. For example, in 2002, Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, entered his daughter Noelle Bush into a drug treatment program after she was arrested trying to use a counterfeit drug prescription at a pharmacy. While in the treatment center, she was caught in possession of "a small white rock substance" (crack cocaine), that the police lab-tested as positive for cocaine ("Police Investigate Jeb Bush's Daughter," 2002, para. 2–3), but she served only three days in jail that July and an additional ten in October that year ("Jeb Bush’s Daughter out of Rehab," 2009, para. 6). In Florida, there are much harsher laws for possession of crack cocaine than powder cocaine. The poor and uneducated do not receive the same patient and compassionate rehabilitative system when they are caught in possession; rather, they face a quick and very punitive legal and judicial system.

Viewpoints

The Politicization of Crime. A good question to ask is, "to what extent has crime been politicized?" Blumstein (2007) writes that, concurrent to the growth period of the prison system, "being 'tough on crime' and especially being able to label one's opponent as 'soft on crime' provided great political advantage in a nation that was becoming increasingly concerned about the crime problem" (p. 4). The author then reminds us of a classic political TV advertisement, which was "a 30-second 'sound bite' showing the candidate vigorously slamming shut a cell door and then proclaiming his toughness on crime." Blumstein observes that this particular form of advertising became so popular that it bordered on cliché, but he reasons that this kind of political ad campaign was effective since it was simple enough to fit the typical thirty-second TV advertising format. The author argues that politicians saw great political advantage in demonstrating their toughness on crime, and because of this, the US experienced a wide variety of legislative changes that directly contributed to increasing our prison population (Blumstein, 2007, p. 5). The author also makes an important distinction between the growth of crime and the growth of punitiveness, which essentially explains how violent crimes could go down even while the number of incarcerated doubled. It is not that violent crimes have increased, but that laws have become much more punitive for nonviolent crimes—and these harsh laws were probably enacted for essentially political reasons.

Jones (2006) brings up another angle to the politicization of crime, and that is the role of lobbying from the prison industrial complex. For example, the "correctional officers union in California has become one of the state's top political contributors, and that their lobbying efforts push for tougher laws and longer sentences" (para. 6), presumably to ensure steady if not increased employment of corrections officers. Jones also notes that "private firms quickly get addicted to the government cash. They, too, have poor rehabilitation rates and spend their time lobbying state legislatures for tougher laws and longer sentences" (para. 8).

Once the tougher laws get pushed through, state governors further benefit the private sector from tax dollars by increasing the prison system budget. Frederickson (2008) notes that growth in spending for the prison system has pushed aside other priorities. For example, between the late 1980s and late 2000s, state spending on higher education increased by 21 percent, but the spending for the prison system increased 127 percent (Frederickson, 2008, p. 11). Politics has changed government into a system of governing through politicized crime in society, and Frederickson (2008) asks what the end result of governing through crime has done to government:

"Whether one values American democracy for its liberty or its equality-enhancing features, governing through crime has been bad. First, the vast reorienting of fiscal and administrative resources toward the criminal justice system at both the federal and state levels has resulted in a shift aptly described as transformation from the 'welfare state' to the 'penal state.' The result has not been less government, but a more authoritarian executive, a more passive legislature, and a more defensive judiciary than even the welfare state itself was accused of producing" (p. 11).

Blumstein (2007) writes that because the politicization of crime has been occurring for some time and is likely to accelerate, it is all the more urgent to intercept it (p. 14). Jones points out the biggest problem with the PIC by asking a central question and providing the answer: "Where are the financial incentives for prisons to properly perform their rehabilitative function? If anything, the captains of the incarceration industry have a perverse incentive to rehabilitate as few people as possible and keep business booming" (2006, para. 4). Gonnerman and Brown point out that the punitive philosophy reigning within the PIC makes the odds of rehabilitation far less. America's prisons are filled with illiterate men and women who never graduated from high school—30 percent of adult prisoners in 2014 had a high school diploma or GED or less, according to the US PIAAC Survey of Incarcerated Adults, and they have a very difficult time finding employment after release (Gonnerman & Brown, 2008). The punitive measures continue once a prisoner is released from the prison system: "Once freed, they become second-class citizens. Depending on the state, they may be denied public housing, student loans, a driver's license, welfare benefits, and a wide range of jobs." The authors point out that this may be the reason that, within three years of being released, nearly half of the ex-convicts will be convicted of a new crime (Gonnerman & Brown, 2008, para.7). Examining data from twenty-three states, the Pew Charitable Trusts found that between 2005 and 2012, the three-year recidivism rate (including rearrests, reconviction, or returns to custody) was 48 percent for those released in 2005 but dropped to 37 percent for those released in 2012, marking a slowing of both the short-term and long-term recidivism rates. In 2021, the Bureau of Justice released data from a multi-year study (2008-2018) which found the rearrest rate to be 66 percent within three years and more than 80 percent in ten years (Bureau of Justice, 2021). However, those who enroll in education programs offered through the prisons, they are nearly half less likely to reoffend (Gibbons & Ray, 2021).

Solution to Prison Growth. The most fundamental solution to the unnecessary growth of US prisons lies within Gonnerman and Brown's final analysis: "We've become a two-tier society in which millions of ostensibly free people are prohibited from enjoying the rights and privileges accorded to everyone else—and we continue to be defined by our desire for punishment and revenge, rather than by our belief in the power of redemption" (2008, para. 8).

The most basic change that needs to occur is a change in our belief as to what function prisons should serve for our society and also in our perception of what constitutes crime worthy of lengthy incarceration. Spear suggests that a good starting place for reform is to change the mandatory-minimum drug laws that keep low-level drug offenders incarcerated for decades. He also believes citizens should urge lawmakers to change drug law sentencing to treatment rather than to prison. Spear and other researchers of the prison system believe that “the goal of criminal justice should not be simply to punish, but to prepare prisoners for re-entry into the communities to which they will eventually return” (Spear, 2006, p. 23), meaning rehabilitation.

Education. From a rehabilitative perspective, education in prisons is of primary importance. According to Bracey, research on “the impact of education on recidivism finds positive effects, whether the program provides basic secondary education, vocational education, or college education.” The author cites research into the efficacy of education in reducing recidivism and writes that "participation in prison education programs reduced recidivism by about 29 percent overall" (Bracey, 2006, p. 253). However, education in prisons has significantly diminished since America has taken its punitive approach. From 1972 until the early 1990s, prisoners who were not on death row or sentenced to life without parole could qualify for federal Pell grants and other government funding for postsecondary educational programs, but after their eligibility was eliminated in 1994, the number of programs dropped from 350 to a dozen in 2005 (Gonnerman & Brown, 2008, para. 6; Skorton & Altschuler, 2013). Thus, the most powerful tool to prevent recidivism was significantly reduced. The US Department of Education piloted a Second Chance Pell partial program beginning in the mid-2010s to expand funding for selected college-in-prison programs. By 2020, 34 percent of recipients of the Second Chance Pell Grant were Black and 41 percent were White, despite the higher proportion of Black inmates. Congress restored regular access to the Pell Grant in 2020 (Gibbons & Ray, 2021).

Accountability. Jones suggests holding the prison system accountable for reducing recidivism and that we look at any other creative alternatives, such as community-based programs, that seem to hold promise. "If a community-based program can do a better job at keeping people out of prison with dimes than incarcerations have been doing with dollars, let's reallocate those funds," suggests Jones, and he gives the example that YouthBuild USA helps unemployed sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds prepare for a high school diploma while they learn job skills. Jones suggests we increase funding into such programs (2006, para. 13). The policy of "zero tolerance" does not work and has fed a perverse prison market system that is counterproductive to American society in many ways. The change will not be easy since the philosophy and sentencing policies are deeply rooted. As Simon observes, "the carceral state is not likely to disappear any time soon. Behind the surface of political rhetoric about crime is a vast and interwoven circuitry of knowledge and power, one that links politicians and media celebrities to security experts and law enforcement, to parents and employers" (2007, p. 503). The first step, however, is to recognize the damage and social injustice that the system has propagated.

Terms & Concepts

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA): One of the largest private prison providers, with more than sixty-five prisons and immigrant detention centers across the US.

Fortune 500 Companies: Fortune Magazine ranks the top 500 American public corporations as measured by their gross revenue.

Pell Grant Program: A type of postsecondary, educational federal grant program sponsored by the US Department of Education. Named after US senator Claiborne Pell, it was originally known as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant program. Grants are awarded based on a financial need formula.

Pew Charitable Trusts: Independent nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that serves the public interest by improving public policy, informing the public, and stimulating civic life. One of its many missions is working on issues related to state correction policies.

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC): Refers to the complex of organizations that have financial interest in the operation of the prison facilities, including prison guard unions, construction companies, subcontracting companies, surveillance technology vendors, etc.

Three Strikes You're Out: Also called "three strikes laws" or habitual offender laws. Statutes enacted by state governments requiring the state courts to impose a mandatory and extended period of imprisonment to anyone who has been convicted of a serious criminal offense on three or more separate occasions.

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation: A US-based private security and investigation firm. Wackenhut was founded in 1954 by former FBI agents. In the 1960s, Wackenhut began providing food services for prisons and in 1984 started a subsidiary to design and manage jails and detention centers for the growing private prison market. Critics claim that the company's guards have abused inmates in many states. Wackenhut has been renamed GEO Group and continues to operate.

War on Drugs: A term first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971, it refers to a prohibition campaign undertaken by the US government to “curb supply and diminish demand” for certain psychoactive substances deemed “harmful or undesirable” by the government. This includes a set of laws that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances.

Bibliography

A good call in New York. (2007, Jan. 10). New York Times [Abstract]. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN= 23770734&site=ehost-live

Albanese, E. (2007). Texas: Prison bed debate. Bond Buyer, 359(32557), 9. Retrieved July 23, 2008, from EBSCO online database Business Source Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=23859858&site=ehost-live

Blumstein, A. (2007). The roots of punitiveness in a democracy. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology & Crime Prevention, 8, 2–16. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27832182&site=ehost-live

Bracey, G. (2006). Locked up, locked out. Phi Delta Kappan, 88, 253–254. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=23020503&site=ehost-live

Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2021 Sept.). Recidicism of prisoners released in 24 states in 2008: A 10-year follow-up period (2008-2018). Retrieved June 25, 2023, from https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/rpr24s0810yfup0818‗sum.pdf

Carson, E. A. (2020, April 30). Prisoners in 2018 (NCJ 253516). US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved June 4, 2020, from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p18.pdf

The challenges of ‘realignment.’ (2012, May 19). Economist. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.economist.com/node/21555611

Chamberlain, A. (2012). Offender rehabilitation: Examining changes in inmate treatment characteristics, program participation, and institutional behavior. JQ: Justice Quarterly, 29, 183–228. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=71860145

Clear, T. (2007). The impacts of incarceration on public safety. Social Research, 74, 613–630. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26378607&site=ehost-live

Corrections Corporation of America. (2013, April). In the Public Interest. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/organization/corrections-corporation-america

Dahl, J. (2008, Aug. 5). Private prison co. again accused of human rights abuses. The Blotter from Brian Ross. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from ABCNews.com: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5466166&page=1

Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. (2010, September). Crime in the United States: Table 1. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table%5F01.html

Fox, E. J. (2012, August 14). Factory owners: Federal prisoners stealing our business. CNN Money. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/14/smallbusiness/federal-prison-business/

Frederickson, H. G. (2008). Politics and administration in the penal state. PA Times, 31, 11. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=32787171&site=ehost-live

Gamboa, S. (2013, August 9). Feds to slash cost of phone calls made from prison. Associated Press. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fcc-address-high-phone-charges

Gibbons, A., and Ray, R. (2021, August 20). The societal benefits of postsecondary prison education. Brookings. Retrieved June 25, 2023, from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-societal-benefits-of-postsecondary-prison-education

Gonnerman, J., & Brown, E. (2008). Slammed. Mother Jones, 33, 44–46. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=32616829&site=ehost-live

Hayes, T. and Barnhorst, M. (2020, June 30). Incarceration and poverty in the United States. American Action Forum. Retrieved June 25, 2023, from https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/incarceration-and-poverty-in-the-united-states

Jeb Bush’s daughter out of rehab. (2009, Feb. 11). Associated Press. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201%5F162-326007.html

Johnson, K. (2007). Study predicts rise in inmate populations. USA Today.

Jones, V. (2006). Con game. Forbes, 177, 34. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=20507764&site=ehost-live

Klein, E., & Soltas, E. (2013, August 13). Wonkbook: 11 facts about America's prison population [Web log]. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from the Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/wonkbook-11-facts-about-americas-prison-population/

Lee, S. (2012, June 20). By the numbers: The U.S.’s growing for-profit detention industry. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from ProPublica: http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry

Locked inside a nightmare [Electronic version]. (2000, May). 60 Minutes II. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from CBS News website. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/05/09/60II/main193636.shtml

Massoglia, M., & Warner, C. (2011). The consequences of incarceration. Criminology & Public Policy, 10, 851–863. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=62976813

NAACP. (2013). Criminal justice fact sheet. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from: http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Page, J. (2011). Prison officer unions and the perpetuation of the penal status quo. Criminology & Public Policy, 10, 735–770. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=62976818

Pew Center on the States. (2011, April). State of recidivism: The revolving door of America’s prisons. Author. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/sentencing%5Fand%5Fcorrections/State%5FRecidivism%5FRevolving%5FDoor%5FAmerica%5FPrisons%20.pdf

Police investigate Jeb Bush's daughter. (2002, Sept. 10). CNN. Retrieved August 6, 2008, from http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/09/10/noelle.bush

Race and ethnicity. (2023, June 7). Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved June 26, 2023, from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/race‗and‗ethnicity

St. John, P. (2013, August 8). California seeks private prison deals. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-ff-brown-private-prison-deal-20130808,0,7425067.story#axzz2l6mTDSso

Saskal, R. (2006). Calif. Gov. unveils plan for prisons. Bond Buyer, 358(32535), 1–40. Retrieved July 23, 2008, from EBSCO online database Business Source Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=23530387&site=ehost-live

Savitsky, D. (2012). Is plea bargaining a rational choice? Plea bargaining as an engine of racial stratification and overcrowding in the United States prison system. Rationality & Society, 24, 131–167. Retrieved December 31, 2014, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=76333163

Schwarzenegger v. Plata. (2010). Retrieved November 19, 2013, from the Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School website: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/09-1233#%5FIssues

Sentencing Project. (2019). Criminal justice facts. Retrieved June 4, 2020, from https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts

Sentencing Project. (2013b). Report of the Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee: Regarding racial disparities in the United States criminal justice system. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd%5FICCPR%20Race%20and%20Justice%20Shadow%20Report.pdf

Simon, J. (2007). Rise of the carceral state. Social Research, 74, 471–508. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26378601&site=ehost-live

Skorton, D., & Altschuler, G. (2013, March 25). College behind bars: How educating prisoners pays off. Forbes. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/collegeprose/2013/03/25/college-behind-bars-how-educating-prisoners-pays-off/

Smith, E., & Hattery, A. (2007). If we build it they will come: Human rights violations and the prison industrial complex. Societies without Borders, 2, 273–288. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=26210561&site=ehost-live

Smith, E., & Hattery, A. (2007). The prison industrial complex. Sociation Today, 4, 1–28. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=23335018&site=ehost-live

Spear, L. (2006). Reforming the system. America, 195, 22–23. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21705251&site=ehost-live

Steinbuch, A. T. (2014). The movement away from solitary confinement in the United States. New England Journal on Criminal & Civil Confinement, 40, 499–533. Retrieved December 31, 2014, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=96567148

Tyler, J. H., & Lofstrom, M. (2009). Finishing high school: Alternative pathways and dropout recovery. America’s High Schools, 19. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from https://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/19%5F01%5F05.pdf

United States Census Bureau. (n.d.) Quickfacts. US Department of Commerce. Retrieved June 4, 2020, from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225218

Suggested Reading

Forecasting Prison Populations. (2007). State Legislatures, 33, 7. Retrieved July 21, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=25237601&site=ehost-live

Hartnett, S. J. (2011). Challenging the prison-industrial complex: Activism, arts, and educational alternatives. University of Illinois Press. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO online database eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=569607&site=ehost-live

Jacklet, B. (2008). Prison town myth. Oregon Business Magazine, 31, 30–35. Retrieved July 22, 2008, from EBSCO online database Business Source Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=31791481&site=ehost-live

Johnson, K. (2006). Inmate suicides linked to solitary. USA Today.

Loury, G. (2007). The new untouchables. UN Chronicle, 44, 53–55. Retrieved July 17, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=28140006&site=ehost-live

McFarlane, D. A. (2012). The impact of the global economic recession on the American criminal justice system. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 7, 524–549. Retrieved December 31, 2014, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=91271025

Meyer, E. (2008). Get tough on crime, not on kids. Corrections Today, 70, 19. Retrieved July 21, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=31199676&site=ehost-live

Taylor, A. (2011). The prison system and its effects: Wherefrom, whereto, and why?. Nova Science Publishers. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO online database eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=369391&site=ehost-live

Trouble in Tallahassee. (2006). Economist, 380(8485), 29. Retrieved July 23, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21527901&site=ehost-live