Xinhua International Review: Private Prisons Become "Dark Prisons" Money is "Justice" - The American Truth Behind Private Prisons
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, March 25th, title: Private prisons become "black prisons", money is "justice" - the truth behind private prisons in the United States
Xinhua News Agency reporter Qiao Jihong
There is a shocking phenomenon in American society: private prisons are a huge industrial chain.
In order to ensure a steady stream of profits, capital promotes stricter legislation and heavier sentences, so as to throw more people into prison and become a "cash cow" for interest groups.
Such subversion of cognition comes from a cruel truth of the United States, which is called a "beacon of democracy": money is "justice".
Prisons, originally places for judicial corrections, have spawned huge profit chains in the United States.
Since the establishment of private prisons in the 1980s, the number of private prisons in the United States has expanded rapidly, increasing by 16 times between 1990 and 2010, achieving a profiteering development.
In 2020, the two giants of private prisons in the United States, Correctional Corporation (formerly known as "Correctional Corporation") and GEO Group, have operating revenues of $1.9 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively.
As a public company, Correctional Services was once named one of the 400 "Best Largest Companies in America" by Forbes, which is a great irony.
"Creating value for shareholders" has replaced "serving the public interest" as the highest purpose of private prisons in the United States.
Facing the temptation of huge amounts of money, the state apparatus has become a tool for profit-making, and "cancers" such as favoritism, exploitation, political and business collusion, etc., have grown recklessly, and private prisons have become a "sick spot" that is difficult to remove in the United States.
In order to make money, private prisons in the United States do not hesitate to bribe judicial officials and distort justice.
The income of private prisons in the United States mainly comes from government subsidies, that is, the government pays fees according to the "occupancy rate" of the prison.
In order to ensure the "source of tourists", most of the contracts signed by the government and private prisons include "bed guarantee clauses", that is, the government usually guarantees that the "occupancy rate" of private prisons is above 90%.
This undoubtedly provides a hotbed for bribery and corruption - "letting more people go to prison" has become a "tacit understanding" between American judicial personnel and private prisons.
One of the most typical cases is the notorious "children for tickets" - judicial officers took kickbacks from private prisons and sent juveniles who should not have been in prison to prison, and their sentences were extended again and again.
The Washington Post said that private prisons pioneered a "money-for-freedom" system that preys on the country's most vulnerable groups: children, immigrants and the poor.
In order to make money, private prisons in the United States have no bottom line to deduct normal expenses, to humanely squeeze prisoners' labor, and to trample on the dignity of human rights.
American journalist Shane Bauer once went undercover in a private prison and wrote the book "American Prisons", which revealed the dark side of private prisons in the United States: restricting prisoners' medical treatment, ignoring prisoners' calls for help, and compressing the number and salary of prison guards to the limit... Low cost The management loopholes have led to the unnatural death of prisoners, frequent violence and sexual assault, and the proliferation of drugs and weapons.
Private prisons in the United States are still "modern slave estates", where prisoners are tools for making money, and people of color are even more oppressed.
A UC Berkeley study called Correctional Corporations of Color found that private prisons favor young, healthy prisoners of color over older white prisoners.
Private prisons have long been criticized in the United States, and multiple groups and individuals have sued them.
The Obama administration announced a phase-out of the use of private prisons, but the policy was repealed by former President Trump.
At the beginning of his presidency, the current President Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department of Justice to gradually abolish private prisons, but only in private federal prisons, and a larger number of state and county private prisons are not restricted.
The social "cancer" of private prisons in the United States is expected to continue to grow.
Just like the proliferation of guns, gun violence, high drug prices and other major problems plaguing American society, despite their notoriety, the "cancer" is hard to eradicate.
The reason is that a money and political black hand is manipulating everything: various interest groups such as private prisons in the United States use the three "magic weapons" of political donations, political lobbying and the "revolving door" of power and money transactions to influence the political agenda of the United States and grab huge sums of money. pecuniary interest.
The US "Newsweek" website reported that in order to secure contracts for detention and surveillance of illegal immigrants, the GEO Group lobbied members of the US Congress every year and provided them with a large amount of political donations.
An April 2015 article in The Washington Post stated that since 1989, correctional companies and the GEO Group have spent a combined $25 million on political lobbying, giving candidates more than $10 million in donations.
The "revolving door" also appears repeatedly.
In 2011, when Gary Moore, a former corrections company executive, was an Ohio Department of Justice officer, the state's Lake Erie Correctional Facility was acquired by the company, becoming the first U.S. state prison to be sold to a private prison company.
An article published on the website of the American "Prison Law News" magazine pointed out that the United States now has two judicial systems, one is for the rich, famous or influential people, they enjoy privileges because of being famous or rich; the other is for others. of.
In private prisons in the United States, two completely different scenes often appear: rich prisoners can pay to enjoy fully furnished "cozy single rooms" or "deluxe double rooms", which have everything except freedom; prisoners without money have only The minimum standard of food and clothing, except to live with nothing.
Such a bipolar world is the epitome of the American money society.
As Joseph Stiglitz, the American Nobel laureate in economics, pointed out in the book "American Truth": American economy and politics exist only for the top 1% of the rich, and are also manipulated by these 1%.
Behind the cruel truth of "one land, two Americas" is "money comes first".