ABSTRACT
Corporations profit from American prisons in four general ways. First, vendors provide products and services for prisons. Second, corporations provide private financing for prisons. Third, corporations contract with prison administrators to use inmate laborers to manufacture goods and to provide services like telemarketing, booking airline telephone reservations and performing data entry tasks. Fourth, corporations contract with corrections officials to manage and operate prisons and jails. Before the 1990s, inmates in American prisons were able to call family members and their attorneys for approximately the same telephone rates that were assessed people making calls who were not in prison. Medical care and other health expenses can account for as much as one-third of a prison's budget. Only security costs more. Inmate escapes, inmate-on-inmate violence and violence perpetrated by guards have plagued Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA raised start-up funds by selling Massey Burch Investment Group a 22 percent share in the corporation.
