Prison Labor: The Hidden Cost of Cheap Deals

1002 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Impact of war on drugs

Lunch time for the average “nine to five” employee can be one of the most enjoyable experiences of the day. Restaurants and businesses like coffee shops realize this, so, they want to offer the best deals they can to garner their consumer’s attention. Four dollar meals and happy hour coffee deals satisfied hunger and the wallets of both the businesses and famished employees for what appears to be of little cost. Except, there is a cost and it is at the expense of nearly thousands of prisoners. Companies like Wendy’s or Starbucks benefit from labor provided by prisoners who, coincidently, get paid an average of four dollars a day.
With the high rise of imprisonment emanates more incentives for businesses to make a higher profit. This, in turn, punishes the poor and the disadvantage through the form of inexpensive labor and unlawful detention. According to Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and author of Just Mercy, incarcerations of US citizens have risen from three hundred thousand people to two million over a forty-year range (Stevenson 15). This unprecedented rise in imprisonment and the entities that benefit from it has …show more content…

Since former President Nixon’s declaration on the War on Drugs, imprisonments have been on a continuous rise. Citizens caught with illegal substances have been sentenced to harsh punishments in the form of lengthy detentions. What appears to be a great movement to halt the use of drugs has been counterproductive. “Between 1980 and 1997, the population of drug offender inmates alone increase by 1000%” according to David N Khey, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisiana and co-author of The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment. In Professor Khey’s article “Privatization of Prison”, he correlates the rise of incarcerations to businesses and governments who take advantage of the ever growing prison population (Khey, “Privatization of

Show More
Related

  • Pros And Cons Of Correctional Programs

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Correctional program writing nowadays is at a level of efficiency that surpasses earlier outlooks. In territories all over the United States, there are several curriculums that use research-based curriculums to teach, instruct, and inspire inmates. Disappeared are the days of hit-or-miss execution of curriculums that seemed good, but over and over again just occupied time for the inmates. The previous evolution happened for several reasons (Corrections Today, 2010). The largest wake-up demands was the claim composed around thirty years ago. The statement made was not anything works in corrections systems, mainly rehabilitation. Even though this commonly revealed report was taken from its context, it did in detail carry some notice to the mystery that several penitentiaries were not operational as change

    Read More

  • America’s Prisons and Their Effects On Society

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Mass Incarceration

    958 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mandatory minimums for controlled substances were first implemented in the 1980s as a countermeasure for the hysteria that surrounded drugs in the era (“A Brief History,” 2014). The common belief was that stiff penalties discouraged people from using drugs and enhanced public safety (“A Brief History,” 2014). That theory, however, was proven false and rather than less illegal drug activity, there are simply more people incarcerated. Studies show that over half of federal prisoners currently incarcerated are there on drug charges, a 116 percent percentage rise since 1970 (Miles, 2014). Mass incarceration is an ever growing issue in the United States and is the result of policies that support the large scale use of imprisonment on

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Federal Prisons

    1219 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1814 Francis Scott Key described America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Does that still hold true today? The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet houses roughly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. That means it has 751 people in jail for every 100,000 in population. If you only count adults one in every 100 Americans is locked up. In 2012 the U.S. spent 677,856,000 billion dollars on national defense, that’s nearly 7.5 times the amount spent on education. If more money was spent on education there would be a better chance that people won’t end up incarcerated. About half of the prisoners in the United States are sentenced for non-violent crimes. The population of federal prisons has increased

    Read More

  • Private Prisons Negativly Impact State and Local Governments

    3178 Words  | 7 Pages

    Private prisons are correctional institutions ran by for-profit corporations. They claim to cost less than prisons ran by the state, while offering the same level of service. In fact, the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations, states that their business strategy is to provide quality corrections service while offering a better value to their government partners at the same time making a profit (CCA 2010). However, opponents of private prisons say they do not save states money because of their hidden cost. At any rate, more than a few states have found private prisons to be advantageous. For one reason, many states are facing massive deficits and are l...

    Read More

  • Will Work for Room and Board: Prison Labor in America

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    American prisoners receive free medical attention, housing, meals, utilities, use of exercise equipment, and laundry services. The cost of these services amount in the billions of dollars a year and government budgets are straining to accommodate these fiscal requirements. “There’s special urgency in prisons these days,” “As state budgets get constricted, the public is looking for ways to offset the cost of imprisonment” (Brown). This economic concern requires work programs to aid in the relief of financial burdens incurred from convicted criminals. Once found guilty of a crime the prisoner needs to take responsibility for the costs incurred. Prison labor has evolved from the day of hard labor, breaking rocks, and making license plates to manufacturing, data processing, electronics, farming, construction, and even customer relations. Prisoners in America need to work, not to be confused with slavery, for economical, recidivism, and responsibility concerns. Work programs are crucial if taxpayers are tired of paying the cost for prison's financial liability, prisoner's family support, and release support programs.

    Read More

  • Diversion Programs Vs Incarceration Essay

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    In recent years, there has been controversy over mass incarceration rates within the United States. In the past, the imprisonment of criminals was seen as the most efficient way to protect citizens. However, as time has gone on, crime rates have continued to increase exponentially. Because of this, many people have begun to propose alternatives that will effectively prevent criminals from merely repeating their illegal actions. Some contend that diversion programs, such as rehabilitation treatment for drug offenders, is a more practical solution than placing mentally unstable individuals into prison. By helping unsteady criminals regain their health, society would see an exceptional reduction in the amount of crimes committed. Although some

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Prison Overcrowding

    219 Words  | 1 Pages

    On an average nearly 688,000 prisoners are released back into society, and of which includes 433,000 prisoner's waiting for trial and convictions, and the remaining percentage of prisoner's are serving sentences for minor and non-violent crimes, although, in the attempt to ensure public safety. Prison overcrowding continues to be a grave concern to the safety and welfare of the general public in California today because consequently the percentage of juvenile offenders detained represents 12,000 for technical violations, and 3,000 juveniles are detained for status offenses costing the taxpayers on an average $31,286 annually, and currently, the number of offender’s incarcerated in State and Federal prisons today is an astounding 2.4 million

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Mass Incarceration

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Alternatives To Prison

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    Not everyone loves the ideas of alternatives to prison because alternatives to prison seem to work only when there is a limited number of cases that adhere to the sentence, However, when places like California is spending more money on their prison systems than on actual education, alternatives to prison seem to be the best choice (David, 2006).

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of For Profit Prisons

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Should prisons in the United States be for profit? How do for profit prisons benefit the United States? Would inmates rather be in private or public correctional centers? What kind of affects does this have on taxpayers? What are the pros and cons of profit prisons? These are many of the questions that are brought up when discussing for profit prison systems. There are different perspectives that can be taken when it comes to talking about for profit prisons. This paper will discuss some of the ways that the United States has started to become for profit and why it has happened. Finally, this paper will give an opinion of whether or not for profit prisons should be dominant over public facilities.

    Read More

  • Problems with the American Prison System

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Essay

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Prison Overcrowding

    62 Words  | 1 Pages

    There are many different alternatives to end prison overcrowding in prisons. The system of parole is one way that contributes the this issue. When individuals are release on parole it creates growth with in expensesand resources. Supivisors continue to establish new ways to control these issues. Many would agree that some incarcerated individuals should have stricter conditions and around the clock supervision.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Prison

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    a term that they use to reference the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and

    Read More

More about Prison Labor: The Hidden Cost of Cheap Deals

Open Document