PRISONS SHOULD NOT BE FOR-PROFIT

Using prisoners to make profit, and capitalising on mass-incarceration puts financial gain above human rights and the public's interest of safety and rehabilitation.

In order to keep a constant revenue stream, 'For-profit' prisons require a constant stream of prisoners. This means that they benefit when people serve longer sentences, even for minor non-violent offences. It is no secret that racial disparities are deeply ingrained in the criminal justice system. In comparison to just one in seventeen white men, as many as one in three black men and one in six Latino men are likely to be incarcerated at least once in their lives. On average, black people receive sentences that are over 10% longer than white people arrested for the same crimes. These are the communities that are destroyed by 'For-profit' prisons. Since 2000, the rate of prisoners in 'For-profit' prisons has increased at 5 times the rate of public prisons.

A system that continues to keep human beings behind bars, in order to keep their pockets lined is one that is inhumane. Financial motives have corrupted the justice system.

They cut corners in providing prisoners with basic human rights, in order to put efficiency and money over livelihoods. Prison guards in private prisons receive on average 58hrs less training - leading to higher levels of violence and racism from prison guards towards inmates. It was found there was over four times the amount of sexual assault by employees in private prisons than in public prisons, in some states.

It should also be noted that the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, provided an exception clause - in prisons. This clause has been linked to the mass incarceration that plagues the US justice system, which imprisons black people at five times the rate of white people, and profits off unpaid or low paid labour. 

Prisoners are often paid a dollar or even mere cents per day to produce goods that are then sold by large corporations that run these prisons, who make large profits from their inhumane treatment of prisoners. Today, nearly 4,000 corporations profit from this horrendous and outdated practice.

Sadly, this does not just affect the US justice system, but exists in the UK as well. Currently, in the UK, there are 14 for-profit prisons. Britain holds a greater proportion of its inmates in for-profit than any other country in the world, except Australia - at double the rate of the USA. We call on the UK Government to stop privatising prisons, and nationalise those that are run by external corporations!

Please sign, share and hold your officials to account! It's time to ban this abhorrent practice, that puts money over lives, and destroys communities and futures.

We need to stop handing over billions over to corporations profiting off of inhumane detention and incarceration policies while ignoring the lives and families that are destroyed in the process.