[Global Times reporter Wang Xiaoyan] Prisons, as part of the state's violent organs, were originally places for judicial corrections.

In the United States, however, there are prisons that are run by private companies.

Because of the involvement of capital, the prison has become a huge industry and business, and serious laws have become a tool for capital, and a dark chain of interests breeds behind it.

American Correctional Corporation and GEO Group are two of the giants, and the two companies own more than 100 private prisons across the United States.

And more than 30 states in the United States have partnerships with private prison companies.

About 116,000 inmates were held in private prisons in the United States in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This much-maligned private prison began in the 1980s.

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  On January 28, 1983, Thomas Beasley, Robert Kranz and Terrell Don Harto co-founded the American Correctional Corporation in Tennessee, USA.

The background of the 3 founders is not simple. They are the directors of the company's establishment.

Thomas Beasley, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party at the time, is a lawyer by profession and a member of the American Bar Association and the American Correctional Association. His own position and deep political connections play a crucial role in the company.

Robert Kranz was a businessman and lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee, and an important fundraiser for then-President Ronald Reagan.

Terrell Don Harto has extensive practical experience in the industry. He has served as warden, has managed prison systems in two states, and served as president of the American Correctional Association.

  On February 14, the American correctional company, which has just been established for more than half a month, sought financial support from the venture capital company - Macy-Birch Investment Group. The group has successfully invested in the well-known fast food company KFC and the largest medical chain company in the United States. HCA group.

As a result, after just 15 minutes of introductions from the three founders, the VC firm decided to invest $500,000 in American Corrections.

With funds and no worries about contacts and industry relationships, the American Correctional Corporation soon signed its first business within half a year—an immigration prison in Houston that can hold 350 people.

By August 1986, the company had expanded to eight private prisons in Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico and Florida.

That same year, three years after the company was founded, American Corrections went public on the Nasdaq at $9 a share, raising $18 million from the stock market to further grow the business.

grow and thrive amid opposition

  The founder of the American Correctional Institution once introduced to the media that the emergence and development of private prisons was in response to the overcrowded public prison system, outdated facilities, lack of funds and inefficiency faced by the US government in the 1980s.

Thomas Beasley said in an interview that their private prisons have the advantage of eliminating bureaucratic red tape, efficient decision-making and procurement processes that save time and money, and the extensive use of high-tech surveillance and security equipment in the prison, As a result, the staffing of prison managers is reduced, and expenses are saved... Therefore, the operating cost of private prisons is 25% lower than that of comparable public prisons.

  From a commercial point of view, these statements are undoubtedly correct, but when the "commodities" involved in these commercial activities are prisoners and people, even in the United States, which advocates the power of capital, different opinions have emerged.

In fact, from the rise of private prisons to today, there have been constant voices against the privatization of prisons in the United States and even within the government.

In 1986, the American Bar Association passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on prison privatization.

In 1987, the National Sheriffs Association also issued a manifesto expressly opposing the privatization of prisons...

  The biggest characteristic of capital is the pursuit of profit.

When prisons are combined with making money, driven by capital's pursuit of profit, the result must be that more people are imprisoned.

Statistics show that the crime rate in the United States decreased from the 1970s to the 1980s, but the number of prisoners in custody increased during the same period.

Moreover, this trend remains high with the development of private prisons.

According to US media statistics, in terms of population ratio, the number of prisoners in the United States ranks first in the world. One in every 110 adults is a prisoner in prison; one in every 38 adults is receiving a certain form of correctional supervision.

This is inseparable from the unremitting "efforts" of the private prison system in the United States, which can be seen from two sets of statistics: On the one hand, as a listed company, the unit of measurement of the performance of private prisons in the United States has changed from "10,000 US dollars" in that year. For today's "billion dollars"; on the other hand, the number of prisoners held in private prisons in the United States has also increased by 16 times.

Make sure the "occupancy rate" is not less than 90%

  The revenue of private prisons comes from the government. To be precise, according to the contract signed by the two parties, the US government pays the private prisons for every prisoner in custody.

In the early days of the establishment of private prisons managed by American correctional companies, there were similar protective clauses in the contracts they signed with the government, that is, the government should ensure that the "occupancy rate" of private prisons was not less than 90%.

In order to ensure "prosperous business", private prisons often use three methods: first, political donations, which are to make large donations to political parties and candidates who support private prisons, in the hope of grabbing greater benefits after they take power; the second is to interfere in the formulation of justice and related policies. , in order to allow more civilians to violate the law and be sentenced to prison; the third is to support the fight against illegal immigration.

In fact, these three methods are all to ensure that prisons can have sufficient "supplies". For this purpose, various private prison companies have hired a group of lobbyists with hands and eyes to promote power and money transactions, and use the power of capital to "persuasion" "Politicians and judges serve private prison companies as an "umbrella" for capital.

  In 2009, the US media disclosed a judicial scandal involving power and money transactions.

In 2013, a documentary was also filmed on this basis, titled "Children for Money".

The film tells the story of two magistrates in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, who used their power to send about 3,000 teens to private prisons from 2003 to 2008, for which they received $2.6 million in kickbacks from the prison operators.

According to reports, the youngest of the children sent to prison by the two judges was only 10 years old.

And many of the teens who are heavily sentenced to prison are only minor violations of the law, or even mischievous mistakes.

For example, a 14-year-old girl was sentenced to three months in prison without a defense lawyer just for creating a fake profile for the school vice-principal online.

The film also tells the story of a promising teenage athlete who was jailed for a minor mistake and committed suicide by shooting himself in despair about his future.