ABSTRACT
The US prison system has become big business. Corporate prisons compete alongside publicly run prisons to fill inmate beds. In school, most US citizens were taught that, through evolving public consensus, a common need was recognized for the development of formal means to manage, and otherwise control, the lumpenproletariat. In turn, the vast network of police, criminal courts, jails and prisons in the United States was created as the mechanism used to control members of the criminal underclass. Whites dictated the structure and function of criminal law. Persons of color were the subjects of criminal law. Little has changed in American society. Demand for prison space should be boosted by a steady supply of severely mentally ill criminal-law violators, well into the future. Yet another social factor characteristic of contemporary culture seems to point toward a bright future for prisons in the United States.
