Joseph Pastran

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Abstract
Mass Incarceration is the mass imprisonment of citizens in a country. The United States
leads the world in prisoners and mass incarceration has become a problem not only
socially but also economically. The purpose of me writing this paper is to show how mass
incarceration has positive effects on the economy but, also negative and let the reader
himself or herself decide on whether they stand against or for mass incarceration. I went
through different sources in a quest to make a complete argument for both with anywhere
from an articles, graphs, pictures, documentaries, etc. Along with those I conducted
primary research, which was in the form of a survey and consisted of six questions. After
the reader has finished I hope they come to a point in their own mind that they might
want to inform others and do what they feel is right to do in the case of mass
incarceration.

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The United States prison system is home of the worlds largest prison population by a
substantial margin, to where states themselves have more prisoners than certain countries.
The reason for this amount is because of United States criminalization of many nonviolent offenses. Though mass incarceration, or extreme rates of imprisonment, has its
positives it also has its negatives. This paper will go through both positives and negatives
of mass incarceration in the United States focusing a huge part on how the economy is
affected. The paper will be divided into sections by the following questions.
1.
2.
3.
4.

How is Mass Incarceration affecting the economy?

What are facts on mass incarceration affecting the economy?
Whom Mass Incarceration is affecting the most economically?
What can be done with Mass Incarceration to help the economy?

The positives and negatives in the economy stemming from Mass Incarceration are
clearly there, but would decriminalizing certain things and lowering the imprison rate
help the economy more than mass incarceration does. This paper will address positives
and negatives of mass incarceration on the economy, and provide some suggestions on
what could be done to help the economy.
To start off with how mass incarceration is affecting the economy the positives
will be discussed. First mass incarceration to an extent creates jobs with companies such
as GEO Group who are a corporation that specialize in correctional, mental, and
detention facilities. In the United States GEO Group run sixty-four correctional facilities.
These jobs around the United States are created by the necessity to run prisons and
having a substantial amount of peace officers to conduct the criminal justice system are a
big part of the economy solely because it already just has so many people in its work
force. On the other hand the negatives are a complete rebuttal in which jobs are taken
away because of mass incarceration. With all the jobs and amount of prison guards and

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other jobs needed in the correctional facility comes with people needed to house and take
up the spots in the prison. One problem is with the amount of people being prisoned is
that prisons simply cant intake any more people due to overcrowding. This overcrowding
is being caused by the amount of people being put in prison who really dont deserve to
be there. A larger portion of the people being put in prison are non-violent offenders,
simply being put in a prison cell because of minor drug offenses, being mentally ill, some
simply on race as well. Now a lot of these people going about there day not being a real
harm to society are being put in prison causing them too lose their jobs and make a good
contribution to society. Not only does it take away jobs but also prisons are being funded
substantially by taxpayers money.
What are the facts supporting these claims some may ask now and they are all
here for people to see. In 2011 the two biggest private detention companies recorded a
large number in their revenue. CCA (Corrections Corporations of America) recorded 1.7
billion dollars in revenue amount for that year. The GEO Group recorded 1.6 billion
dollars in revenue for the 2011 year (Lee, 2012). These are just private companies
showing that the prison system in the United States is a multi billion-dollar industry. This
is a positive for the economy because the government is basically pumping money into
itself when it contracts a private prison firm. Now once again the negatives outweigh the
positives or positive in the last two cases. Data shows that in each state of the United
States of America the cost of one inmate is more than that of a student by a substantial
amount. The lowest average amount being spent on an inmate per year is Kentucky and
Indiana at around 15,000 dollars per year. The highest average amount being spent on an
inmate per year is in New York at around 60,000$.

(money.cnn.com) It is said that more than two-thirds of the prisoners released will go
back to prison. (Aleem, 2015). In 2010 alone the United States spent more than $80
billion on the prison system alone. (Melissa S. Kearney, Ten Economic Facts about
Crime and Incarceration in the United States, 2014). With how high the cost per prisoner
is in the United States and the overcrowding in prisons across the nation it should not

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come as a surprise the amount of money spent per year. With many prisoners being
mentally ill this leads to a higher costs as well instead of a mentally ill patient being
placed in a facility where he or she could be properly cared for they are being taking to
prison many for non-violent acts. With these people being placed in prison that leads to
the prison having to pay for the medication required for the prisoner. It is also a general
known fact that people who live in low-income areas of the United States are more
susceptible to going to prison because of the lifestyle they are forced to live. All of these
facts should be taken into account when looking at mass incarceration in the United
States.
Now whom does mass incarceration affect the most economically? This
necessarily cant have a real winner for whom, but there are three groups that are affected
the most by mass incarceration. The three groups being affected the most by mass
incarceration include the state, taxpayers, and low-income families or those who come
from low-income families. First with the state is its resources are being used to have the
private prisons running in its boundaries. The state has to divide all its money into
different social programs, but with the United States not being lenient on peoples actions
a lot of the states money goes towards the prison system. Second with the taxpayers
their money is the source for the money spent by the federal or state government on the
prison system. Now referring to the facts provided earlier this is a problem because if
youre a taxpayer would you want to be paying taxes knowing that more money goes
towards prisoners than the youth of America in the school system. This directly affects
taxpayers because the money they work hard to obtain is being used on the prison system,
which doesnt even have adequate space due to the overcrowding in the prisons. Now to

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low-income families or a person just living in a low-income area. Many of these people
are living day to day and grow up in this environment basically in a cycle. The way the
correctional system is set up is for you too fail once you are in it. People in these
situations end up knowing only how to survive in jail even first time offenders how
perhaps had an actual job. This is because once released from prison your job usually
isnt there anymore and the jail sentence is now forever on your record work
environments wont want to hire you, no matter how non-violent your charge was. In a
survey done with people around the El Paso area of 30, 20 of them knew a person or been
a person that went to jail and find it hard to recover after being released. Many of these
people say they where cited for possession of the recreation drug marijuana and when
applying for a job many places will turn them down solely for that action. (Survey,
October, 2015) This is a problem because if you have a family how does one go about
providing for them without doing anything illegal. So after the first person is put in jail it
just starts a chain reaction to where perhaps the child grows up seeing only police around
he or she feels the only way to survive is to get it by any means. Now the way this is
affecting the lower class economically is people are being taken out of the working
environment and forced in jail for non-harmful acts. This loss of jobs might not seem like
a big problem person by person but looking at it on a large scale all the people that are
losing jobs leaves a big hole in the entire outlook of the United States economy. Instead
of GDP and other economic stats being raised they are being lowered due to mass
incarceration.
Some things that could be done to help the economy are just leaving everything
the way it is, because looking at the stats its a billion dollar business venture. Putting a

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slow to mass incarceration could result in plentiful job loss for correctional officers and
people working around these private correctional facilities. Some of these corporations
that own private prisons would even prefer for America to be more harsh on citizens for
their actions since they make money every time they gain another prisoner. On the other
hand Kentucky is doing the opposite with the bad actions a person does. Kentucky in the
last few years has been more focused on getting people in drug treatment and community
supervision programs. This is just one of things they are also focused on getting people
into the right area for example a mentally ill person is now more often being placed in a
mental institution instead of a prison. Along with the above actions they have also tried to
place kids under house arrest with being allowed to go to school instead of being placed
in a juvenile detention center. All of these actions in the next ten years are expected to
save the state $500,000,000. (Hedge, 2014) All of these efforts Kentucky is taking in
softening their approach to incarceration, not only saves them $500,00,000 from their
cutbacks on placing people directly in prison, but it is allowing them to break away from
private correctional facilities and use more state owned which saves plenty resources
since they dont have to pay dividends to those private companies. Along with that
keeping students in a classroom setting with restriction of them needing to behave in the
classroom show up and get decent grades will help them in the future because many have
started to change their lives around and will lead to them being productive working
members of society. (Hedge, 2014) Positives and negatives stemming from mass
incarceration are present for anyone wanting to choose a side. With the economy finally
starting to stabilize somewhat many could argue that mass incarceration helped the
economy, but on the other hand others would say its just a waste of resources and money

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which could be used in social and school programs. Its clear mass incarceration has an
impact on the United States economy, but if mass incarceration is good or bad its up to
you.

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Reference Page

Works Cited
Aleem, Z. (2015, Febuary 20). 8 Jarring Facts That Every American
Needs to Know About Our Prison System. Retrieved October 22, 2015,
from Mic: http://mic.com/articles/110920/8-jarring-facts-that-everyamerican-needs-to-know-about-our-prison-system
Hedge, D. (Director). (2014). Locked up in america: solitary nation and
prison state [Motion Picture].
Lee, S. (2012, June 20). By the Numbers: The U.S.s Growing For Profit
Detention Industry. Retrieved October 22, 2015, from ProPublica :
http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-forprofit-detention-industry
Melissa S. Kearney, B. H. (2014). Ten Economic Facts about Crime and
Incarceration in the United States. The Hamilton Project. Washington:
Brookings.
Yellin, T. Education Vs. Price Costs. CNN, Atlanta.
Multiple People (Survey, October, 2015)
Education vs prison costs. (n.d.). Retrieved October 25, 2015.