Abstract

Incarceration, Inc

In 2004, Arizona has more than 31,000 prison inmates and still growing, with much of the momentum for the ongoing expansion squarely attributable to the private prison lobby--which succeeded in getting the industry exempted from most state taxes. Private prison companies lure state-employed guards by offering short-term bonuses and pay raises. They do not dwell on the fact that, unlike the unionized state prison guards--whose union, AFSCME, has negotiated a generous, and guaranteed, pension package over the years--private guards receive a benefits package that in the long term is virtually worthless. Florida Police Benevolent Association legislative assistant Ken Kopczynski, who has spent years tracking the expansion of the private prison sector, has identified close to 300 state and federal prisons, jails, juvenile detention facilities and holding centers for illegal immigrants operated by the private sector nationwide, housing some 132,000. Many small states have chosen to export large numbers of their prisoners to out-of-state private facilities rather than bear the cost of building their own new prisons. At the same time, many impoverished counties have essentially converted themselves into for-profit prison speculators, often in conjunction with private companies, their lobbyists and middlemen. These small counties have issued bonds to build prisons and immigrant detention centers and have then approached federal agencies, trying to woo prisoner contracts by offering rock-bottom prices.