May 11^th

I’ll bet you’ve been told that crime doesn’t pay; that’s not true, crime pays and pays big time and it’s all perfectly legal… and no, this is not a koan. I’m talking about the folks who monetize misery at Corrections Corporation of America. This outfit owns prisons and charges state and federal governments for housing their prisoners. They are making money from crime, making a lot of money. Their symbol is CXW; CCA, a more apt symbol, was already taken by The Container Corporation of America which is possibly a more apt name!

If you have been keeping up you know that our country has about 700/100,000 people in prisons compared with less the 200/100,000 in most other so called civilized western countries. If you assume a cost of 35 thousand dollars per prisoner that comes to an uncomfortable 77 billion dollars a year spent on keeping people in prisons. From 1991 to 2011 the prison population increased 500 percent. Our national obsession with making money has attracted some entrepreneurs to participate in this vast wealth.

CXW manages prisons under contract with various government entities. Their preferred deal is to buy a prison from the government entity that has been running it, pay for it up front, with the proviso that the government agree to keep the prison beds 90 percent full. The government will pay CXW so much a prisoner for their care at a price to be renegotiated yearly. At the same time CXW lobbies strenuously for “truth in sentencing” a phrase which means no plea bargaining, no time off for good behavior, or for any other reason. CXW can’t make money if people don’t serve their entire sentence.

 The company has been doing very well indeed for they have powerful friends in the law and order camp, folks who are not big on re-education, teaching prisoners a trade or any other means to reduce recidivism. In 2013 the company grossed 1.7 Billion dollars with 300 million dollars of profit; that was about twice the profit made the year before. There have been problems: there have been prison riots over claims of inadequate food, lax health care and overcrowding. Well of course there have, any business makes more money if it can cut expenses; this business is no different than any other.

Private prisons have a long history in this country, not the corporate big business CXW types but on a much smaller scale. Early in this century southern sheriffs, particularly Texas sheriffs would pick up loitering black men who, because they had no work, could be jailed for loitering. Once the sheriff had a dozen or so men jailed for 90 days he would rent them out to local farmers to work for less than the prevailing wage. The deal was the sheriff owned the jail, his wife usually cooked the food for the inmates at the sheriff’s expense and the sheriff got to keep any money the prisoners earned as well as his salary. So monetizing misery in this country is nothing new.