A rising market finding many investors these days is the private detention industry. According to data from the Department of Justice, the private prison population increased 37 percent between 2002 and 2009, and the number of privately operated prisons is increasing rapidly.
Ethics should come into question when somebody stands to profit off locking somebody else away behind bars. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) had a $17.4 million lobbying expenditure in the past decade. This is a meager expenditure considering the CCA recorded $1.7 billion in revenue in 2011 alone.
If one stands to profit by keeping someone else locked up, it would also be logical to spend lobbying money on keeping other commodities and behaviors, such as the sale and use of marijuana illegal.
In 2007, [according to what source?] there were 1,841,182 drug arrests in North America, 47 percent of which were marijuana arrests, an increase of 86,000 in just two years. With such a large portion of drug crimes having to do with marijuana, it would make sense for the private detention industry to fight its legalization tooth and nail.
There are over 2.2 million Americans in jail. In China, a country with a population four times greater than ours, there are only 1.6 million people in jail. Although having only five percent of the world’s population, America is home to 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated people. The privatization of prisons is sure to increase these numbers in the future.
Prisons should not be profit driven, as this provides an incentive to put an increasing number of citizens behind bars and to wreak havoc on an increasing number of lives. Prisons should be run exclusively by public authorities-federal, state, or local-as they serve a public order function. They are places to be reserved for people who cannot function in society without causing pain or damage.
And so, when a growing number of those incarcerated are locked up for victimless crimes, any ethical arguments supporting this for-profit industry become questionable indeed.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025