The Prison Industrial Complex

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When people think about crime several things come to mind: murder, rape, drugs and assault. People should not forget that white collar and corporate crimes such as embezzlement and toxic waste dumping are equally as important. If you asks those same people, they would agree that crime hurts society and that laws where created to protect society. Unfortunately, citizens tend to forget that crime is socially constructed and how society perceives the social problem of crime determines how the problem is treated. According to the articles “Making slave Labor Fly,” and “Crime and Policy,” politicians have devised many ways to control how society believes social problems should be treated to further their own agenda. The United States has a high per capita incarceration rate. The prison-industrial complex has become major element of the country's economy. Like the military industrial complex, a term coined in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech in 1960, the prison-industrial complex is a mixture of government interests and private business. Profit, of course, is a major motive with social control another. The social implications of the prison-industrial complex are profound, and indicate the direction the United States is taking to solve its social problems. The result, however, is not the solving of social problems with better health care, education and services for people, but the growth of a new big business, the prison industry. The dominate sector of society benefits from the creation of the prison industry. According to “Campus Activism Defeats Multinational's Prison Profiteering,” and “Steel Town Lockdown,” correctional centers run by Corrections Corporation of America, makes a lot of money locking up convicted criminals. They do this by hiring staff no experience, and importing inmates from overflowing prisons. In New York communities

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