Private Prisons Quotes

The prison industrial complex, to put it in its crassest term, is a system of industrial mass incarceration. So there's what you call bureaucratic thrust behind it. It's hard to shut off because politicians rely upon the steady flow of jobs to their district that the prison system and its related industries promise.

The fact that's why the prisons and stock in private prisons rose the very day after the election results [for Donald Trump] were announced. The fact that progress that was made for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ people, are all at risk.

Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jail and prisons, however, they can each generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year.

The war on drugs causes other supplemental crimes to take place because of the original illegality of it. But then again, that's the other reason that they're fighting it is the corporate prisons they have now. Because they've privatized all our prisons, corporations have to make money, and the only way they can make money is, I believe, the prisons have to be at least 80-90 percent full. That's why the United States - which is home of the brave, land of the free - we have more people in prison than any other country in the world.

When the power of private prisons is diminished, so, too, is their ability to engage in back-door political lobbying that has an impact on public and private prisons alike.

This is sort of the epitome of the economic elite that is converging with a political elite. It's not only the banks and insurance companies. It's the war industry and private prisons. Certainly the fossil fuel agencies. It's not only that they're supporting this campaign, they're supporters of the Clinton Foundation. And where the Clinton Foundation ends and Hillary's [Clinton] political actions begin, that too is quite troubling.

The U.S. prison system, over all, disproportionately affects black and brown people, but people of color are overrepresented to a greater degree in private prisons.

Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?

We need to have more second chance programs. I'm glad that we're ending private prisons in the federal system; I want to see them ended in the state system.

The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.

This same economic system, based on short-term growth and endless profits is also the reason for pretty much everything else that is lousy in our society, from private prisons to Fox News. What I'm arguing is that, in fact, what we've been told is a lie.

Prisons are a big business now. They are privately run. They have powerful lobbyists. And they have bought most State politicians in America.

Now that private prison companies have found that they can make a killing on mass incarceration, these private prison companies are now in the business of building detention centers for suspected illegal immigrants.

Some of our system of mass incarceration really has to be traced back to the law-and-order movement that began in the 1950s, in the 1960s.

Too often reports have found that private jails and prisons are understaffed, have poor medical care, and have increased security risks, undermining public safety and their responsibility to taxpayers.

You shouldn't have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans.

Privately run jails are a mark of American "reinvented government" that has been picked up by neoconcervatives in Canada.

For those interested in learning more about corporations and private individuals profiting from the caging of human beings, I highly recommend the book "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration."

The moral abhorrence of private prisons has been brought to our attention by courageous acts of investigative journalism, illuminating scholarship, and the work of activists who have decried the social stratification brought about by our prison systems.

Private prison companies are now listed on the New York Stock exchange and are doing quite well in a time of economic recession (and depression in some communities). But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

When I went out to shoot for the first time, I thought this was going to be about the prison industrial complex, purely about prison for profit and the ways in which there's an industry making money and profiting off punishment.

Private-sector firms are increasingly active in the prison industry and they and the militantly unionized correctional officers, almost all unskilled labor, constantly lead public demands for more criminal statutes and more draconian penalties.

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he's a criminal instead of a scholar. It's business.

Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have - until recently - were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the 'kids for cash' judges were apparently experimenting with.

One would think that if the State takes the extreme step of depriving a person of their liberty, then those the State employs to incarcerate must surely be directly accountable to the State. Privatizing that accountability is wrong in principle.