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10 Examples of How America Uses Prisons As a White Jobs Program and Profit Center

Posted byBy Nick Chiles | Published on: CommentsComments (18)

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Profiting From Locking Up Children

In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in 2009, it was revealed that for 10 years, the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, who made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings. When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received 28 years, but not before thousands of young lives had been ruined.

 

 

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Immigrants Are Good for Business

In recent years, private prisons have profited not only from harsh sentencing policies but also from an unprecedented increase in the number of detained immigrants — a group incarcerated pursuant to civil detention authority but housed in prison-like conditions. According to one group, facilities operated by private prison companies currently house nearly 50 percent of the more than 30,000 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at any given time.

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