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Incentives to Incarcerate: Corporation Involvement in Prison Labor and the Privatization of the Prison System
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. The United States accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s population, yet it accounts for 25% of the world’s prisoners. Not only does the United States mercilessly incarcerate its own citizens, it disproportionately incarcerates African American and Latino men. This fact on its own is disturbing; however, when it is coupled with the fact that corporations profit from and lobby for an overly aggressive and ineffective criminal justice system, makes these statistics even more horrendous. Private prison companies such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group admit that their business model is dependent on the incarceration of massive numbers of human beings and that leniency in criminal punishment would adversely affect profits. The capitalist mentality which is essential for these corporations to stay in business is inherently incompatible with human rights