The Lion's Pride Volume 11 (Winter 2019) | Page 13

increase incarceration and hinder the search for alternative penal
policies”. In 2006, one company called the Corrections Corporation of
America, known as CXW, “posted a $21.3 million first quarter profit”
(Antonuccio, 2008), and many other companies seemed to do very well
in those years too. One private prison company called CCA was proud to
have a slogan that said, “if you build it, they will come” (Antonuccio,
2008), which implied that more private prisons would equal higher
incarceration rates. This type of thinking was heavily criticized by most,
and thus they changed their slogan. However, this change to their slogan
did not mean they changed in their thinking. CCA “continues to build
prisons ahead of demand” (Antonuccio, 2008) in order to always be
ready for more prisoners, and thus, more profit. It is difficult to imagine,
but “even as crime rates decline” (Antonuccio, 2008), “the number of
prisoners in this country [has] always increased to fill available prison
space” (Antonuccio, 2008). Private prisons make money off of having
more prisoners and thus more people to put to work. This makes sense,
but what does not make sense is the number of crimes decreasing but the
number of prisoners increasing. This comparison seems widely
confusing and also explains how private prisons make more and more
money off of increasing incarceration rates. This process is unfair to
everybody except for the owners of the private prisons and needs to be
stopped in order for them to not gain revenue off of increasing
incarceration rates.