Prison Industrial Complex Essay

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America is one of the greatest countries in the world, however, America is riddled with problems. One of the most controversy problems in America is the prison industrial complex. The prison industrial complex is a term used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. The prison industrial complex allows private prisons to profit off inmates, thereby giving the motivation to retain non-violent inmates and fueling corruption throughout all levels of the US criminal justice system. The true victim in all the prison industrial complex is the system itself. The criminal justice system is founded upon the principal of preventing …show more content…
America has the largest prison population in the world. The United States makes up five percent of the world’s population, but incarcerates 25% of the world prisoners; since 1978 the number of prisoners in the United States has tripled (Schlosser, 1998). “Today, the United States has approximately 1.8 United States has approximately 1.8 million people behind bars: about 100,000 in federal custody, 1.1 million in state custody, and 600,000 in local jails. Prisons hold inmates convicted of federal or state crimes; jails hold people awaiting trial or serving short sentences” …show more content…
It is also a state of mind” (Schlosser,1998). “The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's criminal-justice system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher profits. “The eagerness of elected officials to pass "tough-on-crime" legislation combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs of these laws has encouraged all sorts of financial improprieties” (Schlosser,1998). “The inner workings of the prison-industrial complex can be observed in the state of New York, where the prison boom started, transforming the economy of an entire region; in Texas and Tennessee, where private prison companies have thrived; and in California, where the correctional trends of the past two decades have converged and reached extremes(Schlosser,1998).” The obsession with locking people up in the United States does not come cheap. The states spend more than 35 billion dollars a year on their correctional system. The prison industrial complex is not a conspiracy and it manufacture criminals. Much of the multi-billion-dollar budget that powers the prison industrial complex that powers the prison industrial complex is installed in the service of racialized surveillance. For example, African Americans and Hispanic Americans constitutes less than 44% of the total population in New York, this group composed of 85% of those chosen for stop and frisk searches in 2010. With the

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