Prison Chic

Abstract

In the United States, between 1995 and 2000, there was a 450 percent increase in private sector prisons (compared with a 22 percent and 29 percent increase in state and federal prisons, respectively). In 2000, “the Bureau of Prisons privatized 3,300 beds having an estimated [lucrative] value of $760 million over a 10-year period.”¹ By 2007, there were 140 private prisons in the United States holding over 65,000 inmates.² By August 2009, Corrections Corporation of America, the largest publically traded US prison operator, ran 65 facilities in 19 states and housed about 77,000 inmates, holding approximately “8 percent of the states’ and federal government’s inmates, up from less than 6 percent at the start of the decade.” “Correction Corp., which has about half the market share of privately-managed prison beds in the United States … reported better-than-expected quarterly profits,” and its CEO stated, “private prison operators will grow their market share in coming years.”³ Most of the for-profit prisoners are poor, as 8 of every 10 inmates housed in these facilities in 2007 were from the lowest income levels.⁴ Many inmates are drawn from the 27.4 percent of blacks living in poverty (as of 2010).⁵