A closer look
Private prison corporations in the United States frequently include deeply dystopian lockup quotas in their contracts with state governments, legally requiring the state to keep the prison beds filled at rates often exceeding ninety percent. If the crime rate magically drops or a state decides to pursue alternative rehabilitation programs instead of mass incarceration, taxpayers are contractually forced to pay massive financial penalties to the corporation for the empty cells. This creates an incredibly perverse economic incentive where the government is literally motivated to arrest and incarcerate its own citizens for minor infractions just to avoid breaching a corporate contract. It is a spectacular example of what happens when you privatize human suffering, turning the basic concept of justice into a quarterly revenue target for sociopathic shareholders
