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Friday, March 4th, 2016

For Profit Incarceration, Every American Should Be Appalled

Author:     John Kiriakou
Source:     Reader Supported News
Publication Date:     02 March 16
 Link: For Profit Incarceration, Every American Should Be Appalled
Stephan:   The entire Republican theory of governance, which is to privatize everything you can and make government as small as possible, has proven time and again to be fundamentally flawed and dysfunctional. That doesn't stop conservatives from continuing to promote it because Republicans don't care about facts, ideology and theology are much more important to them. But beyond the economics there is the morality of this view. Nowhere is that made clearer than the privatization of the American gulag. To my mind it is morally repugnant to have profit making prisons, everything about it is wrong. Here is a an assessment of where we stand now, and it makes my skin crawl.
Credit: The Palm Beach Post/AP

Credit: The Palm Beach Post/AP

The country’s two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) released their annual financial reports last week, showing that they each made thousands of dollars in profits per prisoner incarcerated. GEO made a profit of $2,135 per prisoner, while CCA squeezed out $3,356. (emphasis added) This is most certainly not cause for celebration.

Indeed, every American should be appalled that there are companies that profit on human misery and that can guarantee a profit only by denying human beings basic medical care and necessities. Moreover, the national conversation should not be one of how to incarcerate more and more people for less and less money, but how to rehabilitate them at a cost far less than incarceration.

The research and policy organization In the Public Interest estimates that the cost of rehabilitation is not only significantly lower than the cost of incarceration, ($35,350 per prisoner in the federal system) it is, in many cases, even lower than the per-person […]

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1 Comment

  1. Susan Lewis on Friday, March 4, 2016 at 4:32 am

    This is another reason to support free college education. Not paid for by the rich. Paid by the savings of helping people that are lost!