If this is the kind of treatment accorded to a unified group of prisoners with media attention and strong support systems on the outside, we shudder to think what treatment awaits an average prisoner in the Philadelphia jails. That's more than any other industrialized nation, and a quarter of the entire planet's prison population. In 1994, one in three black men between the ages of 20-29 were in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. Black men were 7 times more likely than white men to be in prison. The system is more focused on profit than rehabilitation.
Private prisons turn a profit by keeping people locked up.
Prison labor undercuts good jobs on the outside by paying prisoners as low as 30 cents an hour. The War on Drugs is putting thousands of people away to do hard time for non-violent offenses. In 1970 there were 5,600 women in federal and state prisons. There are currently 90,000. The majority are poor women convicted of nonviolent economic crimes such as credit card fraud.