Nearly 2 million people are locked in US jails and prisons on any given day. That's a 500% increase in during the last 40 years. Mass incarceration fueled a move toward private prisons-for-profit as states ran out of space to house incarcerated people and money to build new prisons. Our contemporary system of private prisons -for-profit began in the 1980s. Today, private prisons make billions of dollars every year housing, feeding and overseeing incarcerated people who the state pays them to lock up. But making money off incarcerated bodies isn't a new idea. It's actually older than the United States.
For a great genealogical take on the contemporary prison system, check out Shane Bauer's book American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment.
For more on the drug war, prison profits and CCA (CoreCivic), see Discourses of Deception: (Re)Examining America's War on Drugs.
Support the Show.
146: Life in Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (pt 2)
#145: Addiction, Ideology & the Society of the Spectacle
Episode 144: C. Dreams Free at Last (Dr. Christina Perez)
#143: Cults, Drugs & The 12-Step Success Story
#142: Where's my Adderall, Ritalin & Opioids?
#141: The Panopticon
#140: Captured Words/Free Thoughts, 20th Anniversary
#139: We Couldn't Build it Worse if we Tried
#138: Drugs and Addiction in a Neoliberal Oligarchy
#137: Foucault on Drugs
#136: Heroin with Adorno, Marx, Marcuse & Nietzsche
#135: Capitalism and the War on Drugs (Benjamin Fong)
#134: What's Wrong with Prison? (Christie Donner)
#133: Attachment, Authenticity & Addiction (Dr. Erin Boyce)
#132: Prisons on TV and the Spectacle of Punishment
#131: The US War on Drugs 1970-2020
#130: The US War on Drugs 1920-1970
#129: The US War on Drugs 1870-1920
#128: What Prison Should Be Like (Dr. Ashley Hamilton)
#127: Poetry from Prison—Captured Words/Free Thoughts 19
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
Teaching Learning Leading K-12
Regenerative Skills
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast