Incarceration

The United States leads the world in the number of people incarcerated per capita. According to The Sentencing Project, "Crime rates have declined substantially since the early 1990s, " and according to the United States' own National Institute of Corrections, "the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades". Why is this? Well, the United States uses quite a few privately owned and privately operated prisons. These prisons are used by corporations for extremely cheap and often free labor. In a video from Second Thought, they mention McDonald's, Wendy's, Tyson, Verizon, Sprint, Fidelity, Walmart, JCPenny, and IBM as companies that all use prison labor. The United States also believes that prison should be a punishment and doesn't focus on rehabilitation. In Chris Wilson's book The Master Plan, he talks about his experience in prison. Without going into too much detail, Chris was convicted of the murder of a man, who he felt was a threat to his life, at the age of 17, and sentenced to life in prison. After a lot of consistent and hard work, he was able to win an appeal and successfully return to society after 16 years in prison. Upon release, he used skills he learned in prison to succeed and become a model citizen. But Chris is not the standard, he is the exception. Chris made his "master plan" and stayed motivated and focused to achieve his goals, most prisoners aren't as tenacious as Chris. Chris often had to be his own motivation and had so many people telling him his efforts were pointless. The prison system doesn't want the prisoners to succeed, it just wants to keep them locked up. A system like this is bound to lead to repeat offenders.