America should take the millions of dollars that private jail and prison companies make and instead spend it to solve the country’s mass incarceration problems, a Huffington Post columnist reports.
The country’s two largest private prison operators released their annual financial reports that showed hundreds of millions in profits last year, wrote Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest.
“If our criminal justice system stopped sending people to private jails and prisons, hundreds of millions in tax dollars a year could be spent on providing rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration,” Cohen wrote.
He also notes that mental health issues account for a major portion of the mass incarceration problem. “Where our addiction to incarceration really stands out is the decades-long nationwide trend of dwindling mental health treatment,” he said.
“Between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives,” Cohen wrote. “Jails and prisons have become, de facto, our largest psychiatric hospitals.”
At least 83 percent of mentally ill inmates at county jails do not have access to treatment, Cohen pointed out.
In 2015, 2.3 million people were incarcerated. Both of the publicly traded private prisons, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, collected $361 million in profit last year. The breakdown: CCA made $3,356 and GEO Group made $2,135 in profit for every person they have incarcerated, the article reported.
“What if we spent those hundreds of millions in annual private prison profits on helping turn these trends around?” Cohen suggested.
Already, California has a re-entry program providing employment assistance and substance abuse therapy that has a low recidivism track record at an annual cost of $1,200 per person, Cohen stated.
Moreover, a re-entry program for mentally ill parolees in Washington State cost $10,000 per person. However, for every $1 spent, taxpayers have saved $1.82 from incarceration cost, the story reported.
Another Washington State program called Trades Related Apprenticeship Coaching (TRAC program) offers prisoners a vocational trade in construction. The program’s success at a women’s prison has reduced the incarceration rate and has maximized employment opportunities for parolees.
“The solutions exist; communities just need the resources,” Cohen said. “That’s profit –taxpayer money that could be going to fixing our criminal justice system.”
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