If you live in one of 48 states, right now there’s a proposal sitting on your governor’s desk from a company called Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). That for-profit corporation is offering to buy and run prisons across the nation. In exchange, states must agree to keep the prisons at least 90 percent full. Two articles in  USA Today examine the ethical concerns raised by the proposal.

America already has a problem with mass incarceration, and handing over our prisons to corporations that profit from keeping them full will only make it worse — not to mention turn the priorities of the corrections system upside down.

The only way incarceration for profit could work would be if we paid them based on a combination of releases and recidivism rate.  And if we abolished all our unjust laws, of course.