From Prism:
Public awareness has deepened over recent years surrounding not just the harms of the carceral system, but also how money flows through it and shapes the lives of those it touches. Flashpoint moments highlighted the commercial aspects of incarceration: The death of Kalief Browder in 2015 illuminated the realities of the money bail system, a series of exposés throughout the mid-aughts revealed the use of prison labor by major brands like Victoria’s Secret and Whole Foods, and the 2020 murder of George Floyd mainstreamed activist demands to defund local police departments with exorbitant budgets.
Now, Bianca Tylek, the executive director of the nonprofit Worth Rises, is aiming to blow the lid off the prison industrial complex with her new book “The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits.” Written alongside Tylek’s colleagues at Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy organization that provides public education aimed at dismantling the prison industry, the book dives into the expansive web of private corporations profiting from the carceral system, many of which have operated under relative obscurity until now. “The Prison Industry” organizes these private corporations into 12 sectors: telecom, health care, management and operations, community corrections, food and commissary, programs and labor, financial services, architecture and construction, equipment, investors, personnel, and transportation.
Each section dives into the history of corporate involvement in that sector of the prison system, highlights the major players in that sector, and offers moving first-person accounts from formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones whose lives were impacted by this commercial exploitation. In this way, the text moves beyond facts and figures and helps readers understand, for example, not just how much architectural firms earn to design prison and jail facilities, but also the direct impact of that design on those who are detained in solitary confinement. Continue reading >>>
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