The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world today.

The rising number of people incarcerated in the United States first came about during the 1980s, partly as a result of Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. At this same time, private, for-profit prisons began developing in the United States as demand rapidly increased.

The development of these prisons was a huge mistake with serious moral, ethical and legal consequences, and it came about right at a time when corporate expenditures on lobbying were beginning to increase.

According to Atlantic Monthly writer Eric Schlosser, up until the 1970s there were approximately 110 prison inmates for every 100,000 people. By 2009, the incarceration rate had reached 743 per 100,000 of the national population.

This has been a direct result of public policy aimed at increasing the incarceration rate. Imprisonment in the United States has become a highly profitable business.

A 2013 Bloomberg report states that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the United States rose by 44 percent.

The two largest corporations in the prison industry are Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group. Both companies have been major contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which lobbies for policies that would lead to higher incarceration rates.

Prison companies in recent years have also begun signing contracts with states obliging them to fill their facilities, known as lockup quotas. According to a Huffington Post graphic released in November, 35 prisons exist in the United States with lockup quotas of at least 90 percent.

If states fail to meet their lockup quota obligations, they are then compelled to pay the prison companies for the unused beds. Not only is this about as corrupt as the relationship between government and business can get, but taxpayers are also left to foot the bill if the quotas aren’t met.

According to the Huffington Post’s Chris Kirkham, the state of Arizona recently had to pay the prison company Management & Training Corp. $3 million for empty beds when a 97 percent quota wasn’t reached.

The startling influence the private prison industry has had on government policy has been termed the prison-industrial complex, and unfortunately it seems to be an appropriate term.

Obviously, prison corporations like Corrections Corporation of America have an active interest in promoting any policies leading to a higher number of incarcerations. The War on Drugs is a primary example.

The War on Drugs can be described as nothing but an abject failure in terms of effectiveness, but it is also the primary reason for the increase in the incarceration rate since the 1980s. Harsher penalties and government scare tactics have been ineffective in curbing drug use.

Consider hard, addictive drugs such as heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine. People typically make the responsible decision not to use these drugs because they have the potential to completely ruin lives, not because they’re illegal.

Instead of our society fostering personal responsibility, our government has attempted to dictate what substances we need to avoid. The results are laughable — marijuana is currently classified in a more dangerous category by the Drug Enforcement Agency than cocaine, methamphetamine, OxyContin, Vicodin and ketamine. Ironically, the majority of us of course still rely on common sense for these decisions.

Drug enforcement has also become an extremely costly and unnecessary expenditure of the federal budget. Penalties have been skewed toward racial minorities. The results have been both fiscally and culturally devastating.

Unfortunately, now that the prison-industrial complex has become big businesses, it will be quite difficult to eradicate.

Plenty of people are aware that the United States has a high incarceration rate, and that the War on Drugs is costly, racially insensitive and questionably effective, but more people need to be made aware of the level of corruption that’s become commonplace within our prison system.

It’s frankly appalling.

Ethan Demers is a senior political science and history major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on December 3, 2013 at 1:40 am