Prisons and Jails, Economics of

Prisons and Jails as a Capitalist Market

Within a capitalist society, everything, it seems, is a commodity—from the simplest products (for example, paper and pencils) to human beings (for example, slaves and prisoners). Indeed, as Robert Heilbroner noted, within a capitalist society, people will exploit any aspect of society that can produce a profit.

Crime is an example of this. One advertising brochure stated that although arrests and convictions are more frequent, crime also produces profits. A supporter of building a prison in a rural area of California stated that, although one can build a business in an area only to watch it fail because it is unable to support itself, one can build a prison in the same area and know that it will last a long time.

Thousands of companies engage in business within this industry. Aside from firms who build and operate correctional systems, there are firms that provide several different kinds of services, such as food, vocational training, medical services, drug detecting, personnel management, architecture and facilities design, and transportation. There are also companies that sell a variety of products, such as protective vests for guards, fencing, furniture, linen, locks, and many more. This is an estimated $100 billion worth of business transacted each year.

The huge amount of advertising done in journals related to this industry is instructive. Several major journals and periodicals, plus Web sites, serve the correctional industry. Examples include Corrections Today and The American Jail, plus the American Correctional Association's annual Directory. There are at least two Web sites that list company ads aimed at the correctional market: (1) Corrections Yellow Pages (http://www.correctionsyellow.com), and (2) http://www.corrections.com. Together these contain more than one thousand different ads.

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