The average worker works longer hours for less pay than 20 years ago, considering the increasing cost of food, housing, and health care. Social service programs designed to ameliorate the deadening effects of poverty have suffered enormous cuts. All this has been accompanied by the construction of 150 new prisons, massive federal allocations to the military, and a proliferation of police stations and police officers. Private prison maintenance contractors are paid a fixed sum per prisoner, which means lower wages for employees, no unions, more overcrowding, fewer services for prisoners, abuses by poorly-trained personnel, and less public scrutiny. With rural areas suffering from loss of income, many rural residents see the construction of a prison in their community as a source of employment.
Rural communities see prisons as a means of enlarging their tax base.
Meanwhile, corporations see prisons as profit makers. The investment firm of Smith Barney, as well as American Express and General Electric, have invested in private prison construction. Subsidiary businesses have been spawned by the private prison industry and armament makers have gotten in on the action. Firms dedicated solely to the prison phone business provide computerized prison phone systems, fully equipped for surveillance. The result is that while government cannot actually require inmates to work at jobs for less than minimum wage, the inmates are forced to by necessity.