For-Profit Prison Research

The United States has become infamous around the world for several reasons in the 21st century. Perhaps one of the reasons that is least talked about is the one that sits right beneath the nose of every citizen in the country. The reason being the overwhelming number of people currently incarcerated in the United States jail system. The United States and all of her citizens account for less than 5% of the world’s population. This being said it seems strange that the United States also accounts for over 22% of the worlds prisoners. The U.S. has also been under scrutiny for the use of “for-profit” prisons, and the unfair treatment of prisoners in these facilities. Many making links between the immense number of prisoners and the for-profit prisons …show more content…
The total number of prisoners in the United States has risen dramatically in the past four decades. In the mid 1970’s the United States had hardly ever totaled more than 200,000 prisoners in federal prison. Then from 1975 to the current day there has been an unprecedented and almost exponential growth in that number. By the time 2015 came there were approximately 1.5 million prisoners in United States federal prisons. (Sentencing Project. "Trends in U.S. Corrections.") In the same time the population in state prisons grew just as dramatically making a total of 2.2 million prisoners in the United States by 2013. (Lauren E. Glaze, Danielle Kaeble. "Correctional Populations in the United States, 2013.") Due to this growth the U.S. quickly became the country with the most prisoners total as well as per capita, and by a large margin at that. The U.S. contains 737 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. The runner up to this being Russia at about 615 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. As for China, a country with a population that is more than four times larger than that of the Unites States, has 118 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. ("In Depth." BBC News.) It is ironic to say the least that a country that is so prideful of its mantra of “freedom” contains more people who are in fact not free than any other developed country in the world. For the general public in the U.S. there is a large amount of scrutiny towards countries with harsh leaders and unjust judicial systems. A true patriot would be very likely to defend the claim that the U.S. is indeed the “home of the free” as stated in the national anthem, yet it is this “home of the free” that is home to more prisoners than anywhere else. It is these same patriots, and all citizens of the U.S. that have to pay the price for such large numbers as well. Total state expenditures on corrections has grown from under 7 billion dollars in 1985