"One of America's darkest and most far-reaching dilemmas right now" – the shady blacks of private prisons exposes the hypocrisy of American-style human rights

Core reading

Private prisons in the United States have turned the state's correctional function into a tool for capital to pursue profits, turned punishment crime into a lucrative business, and become a "slave factory" that violates human rights, forced labor, violent crimes, and exacerbates racial inequality.

The United Nations official website recently published an article pointing out that Un human rights experts urged the United States to "cancel all for-profit detention facilities" and stressed that detainees should not be targeted for profit. In fact, in the past 40 years, private prisons in the United States have continuously exposed scandals such as labor exploitation, human rights violations, racial discrimination, and political and business collusion, which have been widely condemned and criticized by all walks of life.

In the 1980s, in order to alleviate the pressure of overcrowding in public prisons, the U.S. government commissioned some companies to open private prisons by purchasing services. After 40 years of development, the size of private prisons has continued to expand, forming a lucrative industry and a huge lobby group.

The Correctional Corporation of america and geogroup are two of the giants, both of which are publicly traded companies with more than 100 incarceration facilities across the Country. According to the U.S. Institute of Criminal Sentencing website, in 2019, about 116,000 people were held in private prisons in the United States, accounting for 8% of the total number of prisoners held in the federal and state. More than 30 states have partnerships with private prison companies. Among them, Texas' private prisons hold more than 12,000 prisoners, ranking first among the states.

"[Running a private prison] is like you're selling a car, a house, or a hamburger." Thomas Beasley, co-founder of the American Correctional Corporation, once described the nature of private prisons. The primary goal of private prisons is to make money, which comes mainly from targeted government subsidies, forced labor and low operating costs. Most U.S. federal and state county government contracts with private prisons include "bed guarantee clauses," in which the government pays private prisons at a certain occupancy rate. For example, the Florida Gulf Correctional Service's minimum occupancy clause in its contract with the government states that the prison party charges at least 90 percent of the occupancy rate.

In order to achieve "occupancy rates", private prisons have sought ways to bribe judicial officials and impose heavier or extend sentences for misdemeanors of sentences.

The American documentary "Children for Money" tells a case of "children for dollars". Two judges in Luzene County, Pennsylvania, received millions of dollars in kickbacks from private prison companies and, from 2003 to 2008, sent thousands of teenagers to private prisons on misdemeanors without a lawyer to defend them. The youngest of the incarcerated is only 10 years old, and many of them are first-time offenders who have committed misdemeanors such as minor theft.

A Washington State University study found that private prisons led to an increase of 178 inmates per million population, and sentences began to lengthen, especially in cases of nonviolent crimes in which judges had greater discretion.

Private prisons in the United States have reaped huge benefits from inmates. According to US media reports, in 2020, the revenue of American correctional companies reached $1.9 billion, of which 82.2% came from private prison business, and GEO Group's revenue was as high as $2.3 billion. An article in the Journal of Labor Economics in the United States pointed out: "The state's transfer of prisons to private operations will only lead to more people being locked up and longer sentences." ”

"Here, violence can fall on you at any time"

In order to reduce the cost of operation, the facilities of private prisons in the United States are generally built according to the minimum standards of contracts with the government, and the conditions are mostly very rudimentary, and many prisoners who should be held in solitary confinement are held together. The number of prison correctional personnel is small, and some people have not even received training before taking up their posts, and the quality is uneven. What's more, the prison side acquiesced to gangsters and prison bullies to "maintain" order. There are many loopholes in the daily management and security measures of prisons, resulting in rampant gang activities and violent incidents.

The PBS reported that the George Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, was reported to have a disturbing history of prisoner deaths and abuse of inmates. Between 2002 and 2008, there were 12 prisoner deaths at the facility. The families of prisoners have filed negligent death lawsuits with private companies. In 2015, a massive riot broke out at a private prison in Oklahoma involving as many as 300 inmates, resulting in multiple inmate and prison guards casualties.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there are 65 percent more brawls in private prisons than in public prisons, and 49 percent more inmates attacking guards than in public prisons. Williams Rogers, a former caretaker at the Leavenworth Detention Center in Kansas, said he was attacked seven times during his four-and-a-half years there, including three of which were taken to the hospital with injuries. Melody Brannon, a federal public defender in Kansas, said in an interview with the media that many inmates are afraid of private prisons because they face life-threatening dangers there every day.

"Here, violence can fall on you at any time." Frederick Pieruzzi, a former executive of the French company Alstom, described the frequent occurrence of vicious cases in private prisons in the United States in "The American Trap": "The environment in the cell is getting worse and worse, verbal quarrels and physical provocations are becoming more and more frequent" "At that moment, I realized that I had become an animal... There is no freedom, there is no resistance" "What is practiced there is simply modern slavery."

"Trapped in increasing physical labor, pain and exploitation"

"My day started at 4am. I'm going to the kitchen to make breakfast for 1200 people, then lunch and dinner. I make $2.25 a day. In an interview with NBS, Dominic Morgan, who is serving a sentence at the Omaha Correctional Center in Nebraska, said that even though she was diagnosed with a disease when she first entered prison and lacked the energy to work in the kitchen for 12 hours, she had to work or she would violate the "rules." "There are no days off here, no sick leave," she said. ”

Private prisons make inmates "modern slaves." Laura Epman, a professor at The Willamette University School of Law, pointed out in her latest research report, "Blood Money: Prison Labor and Prison Profits", that the history of private prisons in the United States is the history of cruel prison labor. Private prisons are a "harmful form of slavery" in which inmates are "trapped in increasing physical labor, suffering and exploitation."

In private prisons, inmates are forced to perform intensive, long,remunerated labour, and basic human rights are difficult to guarantee. "If a prison can be so profitable, will it still care about what inmates are transformed into?" American journalist Sean Ball went undercover in a private prison for 4 months and wrote his observations into the book "American Prisons: American Capital and Game of Thrones", exposing the chaos of forced labor, exploitation, violence, abuse, corruption and many other chaos in private prisons. In private prisons, criminals are used as labor machines, their expenses such as food and clothing are reduced, and even when prisoners are critically ill and must be sent to the hospital, private prisons will ignore their needs and deliberately delay.

Sean Ball's book caused a stir in American society, and the authoritative American book review magazine pointed out that the book is a profound exposé of the ruthlessness and unimaginable corruption of private prisons in the United States, and there are shocking inhumane cases on almost every page. The Literary Center, a well-known American literary website, commented: "This is a terrible glimpse into one of the darkest and most far-reaching dilemmas in the United States right now." ”

Source: People's Daily