An analysis of the most recent U.S. Department of Justice data, which is from 2006, determined one in nine Black males between 20 and 34 is behind bars. But Black men aren’t the only ones being locked up: “For Black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the one-in-100 mark. In addition, one in every 53 adults in their 20s is behind bars; the rate for those over 55 is one in 837,” according to a report from the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project.

The report found for “the first time in history more than one in every 100 adults in America are in jail or prison—a fact that significantly impacts state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety.”

The “world’s greatest democracy” is the world leader in locking people up and turning it into a profit-oriented venture.

“Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million— mostly Black and Hispanic—are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells,” observed writer Vicky Pelaez, writing for Global Research.

“The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton’s program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. Eighteen corporations guard 10 prisoners in 27 states. “The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75 percent. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, ‘the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners.’ The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners.

In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for ‘good behavior,’ but for any infraction, they get 30 days added—which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost ‘good behavior time’ at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons,” she added.

Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson- Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state’s governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

“After a law signed by Clinton in 1996—ending court supervision and decisions—caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering ‘rent-a-cell’ services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed.