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All attempts to reform mass incarceration through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics, the courts and state and federal legislatures are useless. Corporations, which have turned mass incarceration into a huge revenue stream and which have unchecked political and economic power, have no intention of diminishing their profits. And in a system where money has replaced the vote, where corporate lobbyists write legislation and the laws, where chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with inadequate public transportation, sever people in marginal communities from jobs, and where the courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state, this demands a sustained, nationwide revolt. “Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left,” said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders.

These boycotts, they said, will be directed against the private phone, money transfer and commissary companies, and against the dozens of corporations that exploit prison labor. The boycotts will target food and merchandise vendors, construction companies, laundry services, uniforms companies, prison equipment vendors, cafeteria services, manufacturers of pepper spray, body armor and the array of medieval instruments used for the physical control of prisoners, and a host of other contractors that profit from mass incarceration. The movement will also call on institutions, especially churches and universities, to divest from corporations that use prison labor. The campaign, led by the Interfaith Prison Coalition, will include a call to pay all prisoners at least the prevailing minimum wage of the state in which they are held. (New Jersey’s minimum wage is $8.38 an hour.) Wages inside prisons have remained stagnant and in real terms have declined over the past three decades. A prisoner in New Jersey makes, on average, $1.20 for eight hours of work, or about $28 a month. Those incarcerated in for-profit prisons earn as little as 17 cents an hour. Over a similar period, phone and commissary corporations have increased fees and charges often by more than 100 percent. There are nearly 40 states that allow private corporations to exploit prison labor. And prison administrators throughout the country are lobbying corporations that have sweatshops overseas, trying to lure them into the prisons with guarantees of even cheaper labor and a total absence of organizing or coordinated protest.

Corporations currently exploiting prison labor include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Caterpillar, Chevron, the former Chrysler Group, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, International Paper, JanSport, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Koch Industries, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sears, Shell, Sprint, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart and Wendy’s.

The United States’ Department of Justice, on Thursday, announced that it will cut back and ultimately terminate contracts with private prison companies. The announcement caused stock prices  of corporations involved in America’s prison-industrial complex to slump.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates noted that private prisons don’t provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources and don’t save substantially on costs. Yates posted a blog, citing that the dwindling federal prison population as one of the drivers of the shift in policy. She added that the population in bureau or private facilities had gone down from about 220,000 in 2013 to 195,000 inmates. The DoD’s announcement about the beginning of the end of the U.S. prison-industrial complex had an immediate impact on the industry leaders’ stocks. At 2:05 p.m. in New York City, Corrections Corporation slumped 37 percent to $17.06 after it earlier plummeted 52 percent. The real estate investment trust’s biggest intraday loss in nearly 16 years. The GEO Group slumped 38 percent to $20.14, after earlier falling 50 percent, its largest drop since the stock began trading in 1994. Corrections Corp.’s report noted 24 government contracts were set to expire in December of this year, as were 10 more that were not eligible for renewal. The contracts were worth $594 million in revenue for the single corporation — 33% of the company’s total revenue. GEO Group currently receives 45% of its total revenue from government agencies.

A substantial rise in incarceration rates, and a boom for the prison-industrial complex came as a result of the failed war on drugs. The prison population grew with a whopping 800 percent between 1980 and 2003. It is noteworthy that privately run prisons have not only shown to be substandard, they have also gained notoriety for abuse of prisoners and rights violations. However, Yates noted that prison populations often grew at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities. She claimed that the bureau began contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine some federal inmates.  By 2013, as both the federal prison population and the proportion of federal prisoners in private facilities reached their peak, the bureau was housing approximately 15 percent of its population, or nearly 30,000 inmates, in privately operated prisons.

The United States was singled out Monday by a United Nations expert on torture for being the only country in the world that continues to sentence children to life in prison without parole. “The vast majority of states have taken note of the international human rights requirements regarding life imprisonment of children without the possibility of release,” Juan Méndez, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, said in his report, before noting that the United States is the only country to continue the practice. A sentence of life without parole means life and death in prison — a practice considered cruel and inhumane punishment for juveniles under both international and U.S. law.

Issuing life sentences for children is banned under numerous international laws, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child — which the U.S. and South Sudan are the only two states to have signed but not ratified. Also, a U.N. oversight body has found that the sentence violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, since youths of color are more likely to receive the sentence than white offenders.

The CCA operates a total of 67 prison facilities throughout the United States, with a total capacity of 92,500 beds in 20 states and the District of Columbia.  The company was heavily criticized for offering to buy prisons in 48 states, in exchange for a guaranteed occupancy rate of at least 90%.

People in jail per 100k people US 710 Chile 266 Mexico 210 Turkey 179 UK 147 Canada 118 Sweden 67 Japan 51 Iceland 47

      Like this article?Join our email list:Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.         In 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that New York City would be the site of a new experiment very dear to his billionaire’s heart. He declared that Wall Street megabank Goldman Sachs would provide a loan of nearly $10 million to pay for a program intended to reduce the rate at which adolescent men incarcerated at Rikers Island reoffend after their release (currently almost half reoffended within a year). The city government was short of money, so Goldman Sachs would step in to do what anemic public investment could not accomplish on its own: keep young men out of jail. If the program succeeded, the giant bank would profit. The more recidivism dropped, the more taxpayers would have to pay Goldman Sachs. On the other hand, if recidivism didn’t drop significantly, Goldman would lose its investment. So far, it’s too early to tell whether or not the program, which focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy, will meet its goals, but according to reports from the Department of Corrections, fighting has already been reduced at Rikers, so Goldman may just cash in.

The Rikers experiment is an example of a new trend in what are called “social impact bonds.” Burning questions about who profits and who loses in these schemes have become the subject of debate asl the trend catches hold. Let’s explore.