The Economics of Mass Incarceration

Glenn Martin, Founder and President of JustLeadershipUSA said this about the economics of our criminal justice system at the recent PA Council of Churches Conference on Mass Incarceration:

"We can talk about crime and punishment all day, we can talk about rehabilitation, we can talk about transformation but if we don’t talk about economics then we are not getting to the heart of where we are in our country in terms of our ability and desire and the lobbying for us to mine misery…"

The prison system in this country is an 80 billion dollar business. It is the taxpayer who foots the bill and corporations that are profiting. There are huge profits for corporations involved in the prison system, with strong lobbies to make sure those profits are secure. Corporations such as CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) make profits running private prisons around the country. With private prisons an empty bed means a loss of income, so there is a huge incentive to keep people in the system.

Many prisons are built in small towns and Glenn talks about prisons being stimulus packages for small communities, where the main income in town is often the prison. One prison guard told Glenn as he left the prison that Glenn’s being in the prison would enable the guard to buy a boat, and when Glenn returned to prison it would fund his kid’s boat!

There are corporations that supply food, medical services and telephone access for those in prison. Then there are the corporations that benefit from cheap labor, such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, Walmart and others, who pay prison labor a pittance as little as 35 cents an hour.

In this country we criminalize poverty. Eighty percent of those in prison are low-income, with 66% below the poverty line. Approximately one out of every three will land back in prison.

“We have created a structure that really returns us to the days of debtor’s prisons,” commented Melanie Snyder, Executive Director of the Lancaster County Reentry Management Organization.

Bail is the first economic hurdle for anyone entering the criminal justice system. If you can’t make bail you will stay in jail until your trial. You can plead guilty, whether you are guilty or not and get out, or you can go to a bail bondsman for a loan at 15%. So if your bail is $5,000 you will never get $750 of it back.

In the system there are expenses for toiletries, and sometimes for medical services and telephone usage. All offered at exorbitant prices. If your family deposits money for your use the prison may take a percentage for court costs and restitution. A bill proposed in the Pennsylvania House calls for taking a 75% of any money sent from home, and 25% of prison wages for court costs and restitution. Some jails around the country are charging room and board for being in prison.

Returning citizens are faced with huge additional costs. There are costs for supervision for parole and probation, daily costs for any special tracking device, if needed, costs for compulsory drug or alcohol programs, and fees for mental health evaluations. If you cannot pay towards all these charges, then you will land back in prison. Add to that the difficulty of getting a job if you have been incarcerated. In PA there are 679 laws on the books limiting employment and certification and licensing for returning citizens. Housing is another major stumbling block. If you can find a landlord who will rent to you they will often demand not only the first two months of rent but also the last one as well.

Not surprisingly, people turn to illegal ways of making money and land back in jail. Glenn Martin suggests with these barriers in the way we should study the one third who make it to find out how they did it. Clearly the system is stacked against people.

It is important for us to address the inhumane conditions of confinement, but at the same time we need to address the hold corporations have on the system. We need to fight the spread of private prisons and close those already in place, while boycotting corporations who use cheap prison labor. We need to hold accountable companies that exploit those in prison; we can do so by calling for reasonable rates for services. Finally, the bail system needs to be completely revamped and people who present a low risk should be able to get out on their own recognizance.

Scilla Wahrhaftig is the PA Organizer for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

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