Private Prisons: A Horror Story

I had a weird dream a few nights ago. Unusual. I was in a beautiful town full of fantastic mansions, manicured lawns, stunning trees, bright bushes and flowers everywhere. But I wasn't in heaven. It turns out the mansions housed the owners of private prisons who were in cahoots with local politicians to insure that 60% of the population of the town were incarcerated in those prisons. They had a quota and kept it. More prisoners, more profit. . 

For all the ranting I do about politics, I seldom to never have these kinds of dreams. I have mostly anxiety dreams. A common theme is being lost, even in places I know well, like being lost in Washington, DC.   

But then, this was kind of like that. I was lost in this town, but it was a town I did not know.  I don't know how I got there.   

Times.com

I pondered it over my morning coffee, and I've been pondering it ever since. It must have been the news of the day that Biden was making sure our government was NOT in the private prison business. About time. 

Imprisoning people for profit is a reprehensible idea on the face of it. Reports on private prisons, including a DOJ Inspector General's report in August 2016, confirm it. So do several books and articles, such as  Lauren Brooke Eisen's "Inside Private Prisons," based on her excellent investigative reporting.

Eisen writes: "When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue." Amazing, isn't it?

These prisons are also a horror story of  social control. My dream threw in control of population growth, too. I'm no Stephen King, but only dystopian ideas and images come to mind.  Who monitors private prisons? Why are they notoriously overcrowded? Who are the prisoners?  Right, mostly African-Americans, mostly people of color, and also thousands of immigrant detainees.  Images of 1984 the novel swim in my head.  

It's time to abolish for-profit prisons, on legal, moral and ethical grounds. 

Some sources: 

1)  https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/cruel-inhuman-and-degrading-conditions/end-prisons-profit  

2)  https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/e1606.pdf

3) Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks. Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reporting and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America.

4)  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer/ Mother Jones sent journalist Shane Bauer to work in a private prison in Louisiana. We get a blow-by-blow account of his days in this long investigative journalism piece.  

5)  https://time.com/5013760/american-private-prisons-donald-trump/  

6) https://ndsmcobserver.com/2020/09/abolish-private-prisons/ A group of Notre Dame students and faculty, called "Abolish Private Prisons," has filed a law suit. They want the college to divest from Private Prison investments. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and 43 Bishops of the South have called for an end to for-profit prisons "because they are not consistent with treating each and every person with dignity."