America can boast it is the leader for the incarcerated.
Our prison system is on the stock exchange.
It’s not necessarily the prison system, but the companies that run them. Some companies explicitly, others implicitly, while companies have gone through buy outs, mergers and name changes. America is not the lone profiteer. Europe is profiting, too, off of our bad boys and girls.
Corrections Corporation of America is now the fourth largest correctional facility in America having climbed the ranks from their first day in 1983. A private corrections management provider that went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994, it has increasing revenues from a growing inmate population.
According to their own Second Quarter earnings for 2009:
“Management revenue from state customers increased 8.2% to $216.8 million during the second quarter of 2009 from $200.3 million for the same period in 2008. The growth in state revenue from the second quarter of 2008 was primarily attributable to a combination of increased inmate populations and increases in average per diems.”
By having tougher sentencing laws, like the Three Strikes Law, more people are sent to prison, which in turn means fatter wallets for shareholders.
One of the largest shareholders Sodexho—who recently changed their name to Sodexo—is headquartered in Paris, France.
The prison system is becoming a monopoly with Wackenhut not trailing far behind CCA. A subsidiary of Group 4 Securicor, Wachkenhut was bought by Group 4 Falck, a Danish company, leaving the shareholders quite a bit wealthier after the merger.
Companies can claim they are helping by offering more facilities for the incarcerated, but with Wall Street involved and shareholders dollars at stake, a downfall of diminishing returns would not be a pleasing reality.
So the system needs to be continuously fed.
There is little interest to rehabilitate the incarcerated when it would be considered a loss of profit for the shareholder. It is no wonder that our criminal system is rising at an alarming rate and why America is #1 for the incarcerated.
Some would argue that our streets our safer with the tougher laws.
There are inmates who are mentally ill that don’t belong there with the closing of many mental health facilities. Prisons are also filling up with non violent criminals that need more appropriate sentencing to fit the crime.
Many European countries have decriminalized marijuana use and possession whereas America is still under pressure to legalize marijuana.
There’s a great deal more than what meets the eye, but the Prison Industrial Complex has become very profitable like its counterpart the Military Industrial Complex.
Sources: US Bureau of Statistics, Corrections Corporation of America, BBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Forbes