The United States imprisons more of its citizens – both per capita and in aggregate numbers – than any other country in the world, including Russia, China and Iran.
And yet, our country's tragic and intolerable incarceration epidemic – fueled in part by lengthy prison terms for nonviolent offenses – is threatening to get even worse.
Why? One word: privatization.
See, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) – the largest privatized incarceration machine in this country – is making a sweet deal to 48 states. In what it has dubbed the "Corrections Investment Initiative," CCA is offering to spend approximately $250 million to buy state-run prisons and take over operations.
Sounds like a nice deal for states reeling from budget crises, no? On the surface, maybe, but what must states cede in return? Simple: our human rights and basic freedoms.
Here's David Shapiro's take writing for the ACLU:
Sure, at first blush, an injection of CCA money into government coffers might seem attractive to cash-strapped states. But here's the rub: states would be paying CCA for this short-term cash infusion with the liberties and freedoms of its citizens. See, for the corporation to buy a prison, a state would have to agree to keep it 90 percent full and CCA-operated for at least 20 years.
Any state that enters into a contract in which it promises to keep its jails full is contractually obligating itself to do one thing, and one thing only: make arresting mass citizens an end in and of itself.
Which will do nothing more than exponentially increase our nation's already untenable incarceration rate.
And it will also put state-sponsored intervention programs – in which law enforcement officials work to prevent incarceration rather than promote it – in severe danger. Such a program was profiled this week in The Economist, a program which works to intervene in the lives of drug dealers rather than lock them away for decades:
POLICE watched seven people sell drugs in Marshall Courts and Seven Oaks, two districts in south-eastern Newport News, in Virginia. They built strong cases against them. They shared that information with prosecutors. But then the police did something unusual: they sent the seven letters inviting them to police headquarters for a talk, promising that if they came they would not be arrested. Three came, and when they did they met not only police and prosecutors, but also family members, people from their communities, pastors from local churches and representatives from social-service agencies. Their neighbours and relatives told them that dealing drugs was hurting their families and communities. The police showed them the information they had gathered, and they offered the seven a choice: deal again, and we will prosecute you. Stop, and these people will help you turn your lives around.
As the article's author notes, the need for such programs is clear since "prison as a deterrent does not work. If it did, America would be the safest country on earth." (
Note this post's title.)
What we need in this country is more intervention, more restorative justice, more motivations to improve the lives of our citizens who are on the edge, who are teetering.
The last thing we need is a privatized organization eager to push such citizens into the abyss.
-----------------------------------
Follow me on Twitter @David_EHG
-----------------------------------
Image via the ACLU.