The Prison-Industrial Complex

The term prison–industrial complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The term is borrowed from the military–industrial complex. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activists have argued that the Prison-Industrial Complex is perpetuating a belief that imprisonment is a quick yet ultimately flawed solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy.

The promotion of prison building as a job creator and the use of inmate labor are also cited as elements of the prison-industrial complex. The term often implies a network of actors who are motivated by making profit rather than solely by punishing or rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates. Proponents of this view believe that the desire for monetary gain has led to the growth of the prison industry and the number of incarcerated individuals.

 When the prison population grows, a rising rate of incarceration feeds small and large businesses such as providers of furniture, transportation, food, clothes and medical services, construction and communication firms. Prison activists who buttress the notion of a prison industrial complex argue that these parties have a great interest in the expansion of the prison system since their development and prosperity directly depends on the number of inmates. They liken the prison industrial complex to any industry that needs more and more raw materials, prisoners being the material

The prison industrial complex has also been said to include private businesses that benefit from the exploitation of the prison labor; prison mechanisms remove "unexploitable" labor, or so-called "underclass", from society and redefine it as highly exploitable cheap labor. Scholars using the term "prison industrial complex" have argued that the trend of "hiring out prisoners" is a continuation of the slavery tradition. Prisoners perform a great array of jobs and are exploited in the following ways: minimal payments, no insurances, no strikes, all workers are full-time and never arrive late. Cynthia Young states that prison labor is "employers' paradise". Because of the high profits involved, new businesses involving the import and export of prisoners were developed. Also the prison industry enables to close the gap between free and coerced labor. Prison labor can soon deprive the free labor of jobs in a number of sectors, since the organized labor turns out to be uncompetitive compared with the prison counterpart.

Couple the information above from here with statistics from here showing worldwide figures for prison populations and it shows quite unambiguously that the country considered widely to be the leader in all things capitalist is also the one with the highest incarceration rate.

A few examples: (general population per 100,000)
Top of the list - US 716, 5th Cuba 510, 8th Russia 484, 39th Iran 284, 84th Venezuela 169, 90th Saudi Arabia 162, 101st England and Wales 148, 166th Egypt and Germany 80, 196th Japan 54, 209th Pakistan 39, 216th India 30.