Prison should not be a private business. It enables convicts to be looked at like dollar signs as prisons strive to meet quotas. This model encourages increases in arrests, most of the time for low-level crimes or even unfair arrests, which disproportionately affects people of color or other marginalized groups. It allows for the profit of people in custody which is basically slavery. The privatization of prisons brings quotas which are very unethical. Why must there be a quota on how many people you need to have in prison? The point of prison is to reform people not to hold onto people like cattle and make money from them. If you don’t believe me that the privatization of prisons with quotas isn’t a problem let’s take a more historic look. When slavery was abolished in 1865 many southerners were not happy with this. They are “property” were set free and they could not make their ridiculous profit margins without free labor. So, what happened next sufficed for the loss of slavery which was the criminalization of black men. Many black men were arrested for insignificant things or even fake charges that never happened. After they were arrested, they would be forced to do labor while they were doing their time. Once they did their time there was no guarantee they would not be arrested again, and the cycle continued with many blacks in the South. Now if we compare then to now its quite similar. Sure, you need more evidence to arrest people and it cannot be as opinionated as it could in the past, but if we look, the people arrested disproportionately arrested are blacks. Black people make up about 12% of the population yet make up 40% of the prison population. How is it possible that 12% of the population commits almost half the crime in America? Black people and other people of color are racially profiled pulled over and searched unlawfully compared to their white counterparts. This leads to more arrests and more inmates for private prisons. Private prisons make inmates perform labor during this time. As you can see this is a cycle, it is a new way of slavery, it is unseen. Yes, white people go through this private prison system as well but black people have a disgustingly disproportionate arrest rate compared to their white counterparts who make up a much higher percentage of this country, therefore black people are more affected. It is quite ironic that prison is supposed to reform criminals, but it is the prison system that needs reforming because it is failing.