Per-inmate fees give private prisons a structural incentive to keep people locked up

Evidence

These relationships constitute what we now call a prison industrial complex. The term “prison industrial complex” was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailing beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit. Social historian Mike Davis first used the term in relation to California’s penal system, which, he observed, already had begun in the 1990s to rival agribusiness and land development as a major economic and political force. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 225 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mass incarceration did not lower crime but bred more prisons; Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit; Corporate profit motives entrench a prison system that would otherwise be obsolete. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 235 (+5 more)

Related

• Private prisons require a steady supply of prisoners as raw material. (similarity 0.88)
• The prison industrial complex term contests crime as the root cause of imprisonment (similarity 0.88)
• Private prisons profit by keeping inmates incarcerated as long as possible (similarity 0.86)
• Punishment is so corporatized that mainstream companies now stake themselves in its perpetuation (similarity 0.85)
• Prisons proliferated while crime rates were falling due to corporate profit (similarity 0.84)
• Prison growth began when crime rates were already falling (similarity 0.81)
• Corporate profit motives entrench a prison system that would otherwise be obsolete. (similarity 0.81)
• Prison expansion correlates with falling crime, exposing profit and racism as drivers (similarity 0.81)
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus (similarity 0.80)
• Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The prison industrial complex term contests crime as the root cause of imprisonment #expands (0.55) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 225