Lobbying for Longer Sentences

Via Lindsay Beyerstein's excellent blog Majikthise I stumbled across this wide-ranging and maddening article in the Boston Phoenix on the obvious financial interest of law enforcement and private prison operators in keeping the lock-em-up mentality.

It is, of course, in these private prisons' economic interests to see more people in prison serving longer sentences. And with current facilities bursting at the seams, times for this burgeoning industry are good. The country's largest private prison provider, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws. Last year alone, the company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, generated $133 million in net income.

For the past 25 years, the CCA has built itself into a corrections powerhouse — it operates nearly 70 facilities housing more than 75,000 detainees. As it does for, say, contractors in Iraq, though, privatization comes with an inevitable lack of oversight. The CCA has been involved in numerous wrongful-death lawsuits, and it has been a constant target of prison-reform groups who claim the private facilities are understaffed and their detainees abused.

The Phoenix article was written by Harvey Silverglate, the author of the forthcoming book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.