Reflection: Private Prison Industrial Complex

The prison industrial complex is a system that is host to a slew of controversial and extreme problems. Common issues such as regular human rights violations, slave labor, the death penalty, over-policing, etc. plague the vast majority of correctional facilities both nationwide and internationally. Private prisons, facilities run by government-contracted companies for profit, boast all of these problems as well as a host of others. The primary distinction between normal prisons and private prisons is that these private institutions are managed and headed by companies rather than the government itself, leading to the formation of issues unique to the private prison industrial complex (PPIC) on multiple economic, social, and political levels. This private prison system is, in many ways, the result of basing important social systems in profit through human suffering and marginalization.