ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the institutional structure of the criminal justice system (CJS) and the relationships between individual private actors and government bureaucracy has led to a variety of perverse outcomes over time. It provides a brief overview of the economics of bureaucracy and highlights important differences between profit in the setting of a free market and "profit" under bureaucracy. The chapter discovers how the War on Drugs has had lasting effects on the CJS, it is likewise essential to understand the institutional structure in which agents working in policing and the prison system operate. This structure has a variety of important implications, including understanding how the aforementioned "profit" works within the current CJS. The War on Drugs that develops under Nixon is critical for understanding the rise in the prison population in the United States, as well as the rise of private prisons.
