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The Privatized Prison: A Look at Mass Incarceration and How it Came to Be

ISN’T AMERICA THE “BEST”?

By many accounts, the United States is considered to be the most advanced nation and one of the most civilized societies in the western world. We are among the best in terms of our educational and legal systems; however, according to Wendy Sawyer, Research Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, there are over 2.3 million people locked away in jails and prisons nationwide… 

To put this number in perspective, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country on the face of the planet — even China, who has a population of over one billion people! (This shows that we incarcerate at a highly disproportionate rate compared to other countries.) 

Naturally, we associate the word “prison” with “crime” and “corruption,” but if the U.S. is so advanced, why are so many of our people incarcerated? 

As this article explores, this question illuminates the socioeconomic issues present in our prison system and how mass incarceration aggravates these inherent flaws. 

My goal in writing this article is to educate and to leave you with a better understanding of the American Prison System (APS). To better understand mass incarceration in the United States, I will the information of article into 3 different sections: “what?”, “why?”, and “who?”. We will be defining:

WHAT mass incarceration is;

WHY mass incarceration exists/why it’s a relevant socioeconomic issue;

and WHO mass incarceration affects/who funds the prison system

WHAT IS MASS INCARCERATION?

According to renowned sociologist and professor at Cornell University, Christopher Wildeman, mass incarceration has been defined as “a social phenomenon wherein extreme rates of imprisonment are specifically concentrated among minority groups.”

Professor Wildeman has also stated that the American prison system, or the APS, is a $74 billion industry funded majorly by the government who gets the money from American taxpayers… you and me. The APS is a massive industry that not only generates revenue for the prison system, but for the American economy as a whole. With this being said, there are major economic incentives to increase the prison population via mass incarceration: According to a 2018 article entitled: “The American Prison System: It’s Just Business,” published by Fordham University’s Corporate and Financial Journal, the number of bodies within U.S. prisons serve as a source of revenue for the private sector with each inmate garnering $6,000 to $14,000 in income. 

Mass incarceration is a social phenomenon with extreme rates of imprisonment fueled by economic incentives. Now that we’ve covered what mass incarceration is, we’ll discuss how it works and why it’s an issue.

WHY: THE PRISON BOOM OF THE 1980s

In the past (like, 40 years ago), mass incarceration didn’t exist. It has come into existence in the past 30-35 years and has only worsened up until now. To understand why mass incarceration continues to exist, we have to understand how the prison industry is owned and how that ownership has been transferred over time. 

Before mass incarceration became an issue in the U.S., prisons were not privately owned — they were owned by the government: the public sector. This means that government resources were used to fund prison institutions, which was only possible because prison populations were small enough to not burden government funds.

In the 1980s, however, there was a rapid expansion of the prison population due to the War on Drugs campaign (launched by the Reagan administration) coupled with new legislation that mandated for minimum sentences to be served by criminal offenders, the goal being to reduce the illegal drug trade within the U.S. This was known as the prison boom of the 80s. 

Because so many people were now targeted for imprisonment, there was a subsequent increase of the prison population which led to an overwhelming burden on the public sector to house the influx of people. This burden led to the emergence of for-profit (this term is important because it explains why mass incarceration is economically viable), private prisons to fill the gaps. As prisons were privatized (meaning they were now controlled by private businesses), there were economic incentives to incarcerate people in mass. How does this work? Private prisons get their funding from government contracts that are based on the number of inmates and the average length of time served in a prison. As you can see, these contracts are incentives for prisons to house as many people as they can and to detain them for as long as possible in order to maximize the amount of government funding received.

As we’ve seen, the issue of mass incarceration is a very recent and very relevant social issue, and the transfer of ownership from the public to private sector has economically incentivized mass incarceration. Now we’re going to examine who the system targets (as proven by empirical data), and who pays for the funds that private prisons receive.

WHO: MINORITY GROUPS are among the most significantly affected and targeted populations to be funneled into the prison system.

There is a stark over-representation of minority groups within the APS, many being charged and jailed for minor/non-violent crimes. According to a Feb. 2020 article written by professor Christopher Wildeman, published at Oxford Bibliographies.com, the prison boom of the 80s resulted in comparatively high rates of imprisonment concentrated among African American males living in disadvantaged communities. 

What’s important to remember is that the prison boom affected all racial groups, as members from all racial groups were incarcerated at higher rates. However, following the prison boom, minority groups, especially those already considered economically disadvantaged, were incarcerated at higher rates compared to their white counterparts.

Additionally, as published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet” details the racial disparities that exist specifically among the African American and Hispanic communities compared to their white counterparts; for example, although they make up only 32% of the U.S. population, combined, they accounted for 56% of the prison population in 2015. Moreover, the recent opioid epidemic further exemplifies the racial disparities within the APS: 17 million whites reported having used an illicit drug within the last month compared to 4 million blacks, yet blacks are disproportionately arrested and convicted for the same crime. 

One reason for the alarming racial disparities within the APS is due to the criminalization of racial minorities which makes them more vulnerable to being incarcerated at unequal rates. How are minority groups are portrayed in the media? How do you tend to perceive minority groups, based on your implicit biases?

CONCLUSION

A brief recap: mass incarceration is a socioeconomic issue that carries dangerous implications for minority groups within America. The privatization of prisons during the 1980s made mass incarceration an economically viable solution to the rapid expansion of the prison population, leading to the creation of a behemoth $74 billion industry funded by U.S. taxpayers… you and me. 

SOURCES USED

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.

Gotsch, Kara, et al. “Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S. Growth in Private Prisons.” The 

Sentencing Project, 2 Aug. 2018, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-on-mass-incarceration-u-s-growth-in-private-prisons/.

Sawyer, Wendy. “Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2019.” Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 

2019 | Prison Policy Initiative, 19 Dec. 2019, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2019.html.

Wildeman, Christopher. “Mass Incarceration.” Mass Incarceration - Criminology - Oxford 

Bibliographies, 20 Feb. 2020, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0033.xml.

Wright, L.B. “The American Prison System: It's Just Business.” Fordham Journal of Corporate 

and Financial Law, 9 Dec. 2018, news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/12/09/the-american-prison-system-its-just-business/.

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“Liberty and Justice For All...”

A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE

I remember walking around my school hallways and not seeing a single person that looked like me. Nobody had my skin color; nobody had my hair texture; nobody had my features; nobody understood the pressure of being a black girl in a predominately white *southern* society and how race would dictate many of my experiences growing up. 

I always felt out of place and out of touch with those around me. Because I never saw people with my same color of skin, I felt the need to, from a very young age, embody a version of the “black girl” that made other people comfortable — a version that intentionally went against the stereotypes I heard whispered behind my back. In doing so, I adopted mannerisms, speech patterns, behaviors and attitudes that were foreign to me in an attempt to ease the qualms I had about my unexplored identity. 

I remember being followed around grocery stores as a preteen. I remember being spat on and yelled at when I innocently tried to hold the door open for an elderly white couple. I remember being accused of “acting white” because I had basic manners and spoke eloquently. I remember callously being called a “monkey” by my teacher when I won a class game of capture the flag. I remember overhearing my friend’s dad asking if “that n*gger was spending the night again?”. I remember my friendships being distinguished by the fact that I was different because I had dark skin and classmates using every opportunity they could to mock my “sh*t brown skin.” 

I remember the impact race had on my development and the impact it continues to have on my experience as a black woman in this country. When I attempt to voice my experiences and my opinions on the matter, I’m always told to shut up because “slavery happened 300 years ago” or because I “should stop pulling out the race card.” 

But how will we understand the extent to which race/racism has in American society if we don’t allow people to share their experiences?

RACE.

Race is an interesting subject, isn’t it? It’s such a pervasive issue, yet one that never seems to be talked about enough. Race, and all it entails is a uniquely American issue, as per our nation’s dark and horrific past; but although slavery happened centuries ago, the true picture of American democracy cannot accurately be painted without race as its most vivid color. 

From America's founding days when Native Americans were labeled as "savages", murdered and forced to assimilate, to the days when the first African slaves arrived on the unfamiliar shores of Jamestown in 1619; from the days when Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and forcibly relocated to military camps during WWI, to the days in which Mexican Americans are called "rapists" and "killers" by the U.S. president himself: American democracy has failed in affording people of color with the same fundamental —Constitutional— right of equality that The Declaration of Independence supposedly adheres to: "all men are created equal with certain unalienable Rights". 

In his book Race Matters, West discusses the structural inequality embedded into the American system, and how these inherent structural flaws have created the unique (and often oppressive) experiences minority groups in America face — even today... And the criminal justice system is no different. 

Political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote in his book The Social Contract that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” To understand this quote is essentially to understand the inherent complications surrounding equality in the American criminal justice system. 

Chains: those that hinder the “unalienable and inextinguishable” rights of the prisoner which they detain solely based upon the color of his skin. 

Chains: those that distort the vision upon which hope for liberty from inequality and imprisonment is bred. 

Chains: those that confine the freedoms of prisoners to the parameters of their cells — chains that exist due to a justice system that fails to justify all. 

WHAT DOES “JUSTICE” MEAN IN AMERICAN LAW?

Political systems have historically been based upon justice, arguably the most important concept needed to maintain ethics and social balance within a society. As the foundation of most governments, justice needs to consist of three major principles: fairness, impartiality, and equality. Yet as a term that should exemplify righteousness and its conformity to truth,  justice is a phrase that differentiates for people of color in a legal system that is historically rooted in racial bias and inequality. 

Legal justice is displayed in the honoring of one’s Constitutional rights and the adhesion to justice’s primary principles. Conversely, legal injustice is displayed in the violation of one’s Constitutional rights and in the corruption of the political principles justice is rooted in. During the American Antebellum period, injustice took shape in the form of slavery. Two centuries later on December 18 1865, however, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and with it, equal freedoms for African Americans were supposedly instituted. 

THE 13TH AMENDMENT

Nonetheless, the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted with a clause; although it states that “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States,” it also declares that slavery is permitted as a constitutional punishment for crime. 

In other words, although physical slavery has been abolished, the roots of injustice from which it was conceived were revived in the form of mass incarceration today. 

Centuries have passed since slavery was rescinded, but there is still not a complete understanding of the American criminal justice system without race at the center of it. Despite fruitless attempts to separate the conversation of justice (and lack thereof) from racial inequality, there will always be an innate connection between the two. 

Justice in the United States’ criminal justice system is not equal for people of color, and mass incarceration is an illustration of racial injustice in its most evolved form. 

Whether in 1865 or in 2020, racial discrimination has always played a significant role in the justice system and the plague of injustice for minority groups nationwide. As a parallel to the clause evident in the Thirteenth Amendment that essentially permits slavery in a more evolved way, mass incarceration is an undeniable perpetuation of injustice from its most overt form to a form that adheres more to legal doctrine; one that is ironically embedded into the Constitution of “the land of the free.” 

The concept of justice, although it should be established in impartiality, is often shaped by public opinion: an opinion that changes overtime. Likewise, discrimination is rooted in societal biases, and there are a plethora of historical examples illustrating that although legal justice should not be altered by factors such as race, it has been and continues to do so throughout courts in America. 

PLESSY V. FERGUSON

For instance, on May 18, 1896, one of the most defining Constitutional law cases in America’s history was enacted, its basis being the authorization of racial inequality under the doctrine “separate but equal.” Stemming from an incident in 1892 that involved an African-American train passenger, the Plessy v. Ferguson trial was a landmark case in criminal justice literature because it was the first Constitutional case under the Supreme Court to uphold racial inequality on a national level; the case was paradigmatic of public viewpoints about racial injustice. Although later overturned with the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, the Plessy v. Ferguson case exemplified that public opinion shapes the notion of justice in judicial settings throughout America, and proved that racial discrimination is present in multiple aspects of the justice system. 

THE “SCOTTSBORO BOYS”

Another historical example: The Scottsboro Boys trials from 1931 to 1937 consisting of the false accusation of 9 black teenagers concerning the alleged rape of two white women. 

March 25, 1931: an altercation between a group of white men and black teenagers ensues during a freight train ride. The freight train is stopped in Paint Rock, Alabama and the group of 9 African-American teenagers are charged with rape by two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. 

March 30, 1931: the 9 “Scottsboro Boys” are indicted by a grand jury. 

April 6-9, 1931: the 8 out of 9 defendants are convicted to death by electric chair; one trial resulting in a hung jury as 11 jurors demand the death sentence while one votes for life in imprisonment. 

Just like that, the lives of 9 black teenagers that were never proven to be guilty of a crime were destroyed without question. There was no justice for Clarence Norris. There was no justice for Charlie Weems. There was no justice for Haywood Patterson. There was no justice for Olen Montgomery, or Ozie Powell, or Eugene Williams, or Andy Wright. And although he was able to escape the sentence of death his peers faced, there was no justice for 13 year old Roy Wright. On January 5, 1932, a note from Victoria Bates to her boyfriend admitting that she was not raped was uncovered, but the damage had already been done — innocent lives had already been altered forever. 

The “Scottsboro Boys” unfortunately did not have the “right to a fair [and unbiased] trial” that the U.S. Constitution claims, yet even today, racial discrimination is a violent perpetrator of legal injustice. Akin to the bias the 9 boys that were falsely convicted of rape were victims of, there continues to be an insufficiency of justice for the millions of blacks and other POC that are incarcerated because they hold less legal value in a system that disregards the notion of equality it prides itself upon. 

THE EVOLUTION OF SYSTEMIC OPPRESSION

Much like the legal injustice African slaves faced more than 200 years ago, mass incarceration is an unquestionable extension of the injustice blacks and other POC face at the hand of the legal system today. Not only is it a form of racialized control that continues to prevail, but mass incarceration is an evolved legal constraint that continues to detain minority groups nationwide. 

Forms of injustice against blacks specifically have constantly evolved; from physical slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and criminalization, racial injustice will always find its way back to the core of America’s legal system. As presented in award winning author Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the racialization of crime and color that mass incarceration abides by functions as an institutionalized form of oppression. 

In other words, the correlation between “black” and “crime” that continues to dominate the American criminal justice system is a mark that has disfigured the facade of impartial justice courts claim. Mass incarceration is a medium of prejudice that relegates people of color to a caste system based upon race. It is a form of injustice that has only recently manifested and a form of systematic inequality that imprisons millions of minorities across America.

Although the words “liberty and justice for all” echo throughout American classrooms and courtrooms, there is an undeniable disparity between the “justice” that equality is based upon, and the injustice that exemplifies the hypocrisy evident in the United States criminal justice system. In order to institute a just justice system, Constitutional justice must first be established for POC nationwide. From the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment in an age that openly consented to the subjugation of human beings to one in which minority groups are still overtly and covertly imprisoned, systematic racism continues to prevail and continues to exemplify that although “[m]an is born free,” the black man may just be continually apprehended to chains of inadequacy. 

RACE MATTERS.

As West states in his book Race Matters, “Our truncated public discussions of race suppress the best of who and what we are as a people because they fail to confront the complexity of the issue in a candid and critical manner” (West 4). In order to engage in serious discussions concerning race in America, we need to understand that it is not a one dimensional issue. In other words, it cannot be comprehensively understood solely from a political, social, economic or legal perspective. Rather, we must acknowledge that due to the history of this nation, the issues of race, racism and race relations lie at the very core of the American system and continue to permeate all aspects of American society, especially the criminal justice system. 

Therefore, to fully understand race and how it affects American society, one has to be willing to recognize this truth and acknowledge the degree to which race continues to shape individual experiences in the lives of all American citizens (some more than others), even today. Whether it be in the form of privilege, prejudice —or anything in between— the matter of race dominates all aspects of American life and is embedded into the fabric of American society.

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None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)” ― Cornel West, Race Matters