The prison-industrial complex is a term used to refer to the rapid expansion of the prison population, specifically in privatized correctional institutions. This term acknowledges the fact that sentencing and incarceration have become tools for generating profit for the correctional corporations that operate within the nation-wide prison-industrial complex. This paper will open with a description of the global history of the evolution of the correctional system and discussion of the two forms of prison privatization: contracting and leasing. The central objective of this paper is to illustrate the multitude of social injustices that occur within the prison-industrial complex, particularly in the United States, because of the rapid, aggressive implementation and expansion of neoliberal policies. To comprehend the severity of the mistreatment of human beings and systemic abuses of power in the ever-growing economic powerhouse that is the prison-industrial complex, a detailed description of social justice will be followed by an outline of the different forms of social injustice that occur in correctional systems as a result of privatization.
Social justice is the social conditions that promote an equitable distribution of valued societal resources and the removal of all barriers or structures that hinder the attainment of a just, inclusive, democratic, and humane society. The issues addressed include (but not necessarily limited to): convict leasing and its ties to indentured labour; instances of bribery and conflict of interest within the context of annuities paid to judges and backroom politics; corporate lobbying for harsher sentences; the failure (or economic success) of the war on drugs; and economic exploitation or slave labour.
Subsections of the paper include an in-depth analysis of several phenomena exclusive to the prison-industrial complex including: cherry picking, the cost-effective myth, financial handouts and slave labour, over-inflation, private prison growth and the pursuit of profit. The topics listed are addressed through several criminological, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. The analysis will utilise and discuss both rehabilitative and retributive approaches to incarceration, and human commodification and deontological ethics. Several other issues such as institutional and racial discrimination will be discussed through the lens of critical constructivism, intersectionality.
