Prison has existed as one of the means to realize dictatorship by the state in the exploitative society until today since the birth of state came in human society, and their forms and names are also multifarious.
However, prison which should be under state control as a matter of course is handed over to the groups pursuing pecuniary interests in the name of reducing the cost of imprisonment in the U.S. Because of this, unique private company-run prisons, which are also known as “private prisons”, have come into existence.
Since the Corrections Corporation of America (renamed CoreCivic later), first private corrections company was formed in 1983, private prisons have been on the steady increase to play the role of “the goose that lays a golden egg” behind the scenes.
Today, the number of such private prisons is increasing unprecedentedly assuming much more reactionary nature and trampling underfoot the law and human rights. Many prisoners are falling prey to oppression and violence in profit-seeking private prisons.
According to data, nearly 116,000 prisoners, equivalent to 8% of the prisoners held in the federal and state prisons, are incarcerated in private prisons, and 30 states are maintaining cooperative relationship with the private corrections companies.
According to the recent data released by Chinese Xinhua News Agency, prisoners are treated as goods in the U.S. private prisons, and children, among others, are falling victim to such practices without exception.
In 2011, an “incident of exchanging child with the dollar” was exposed in Pennsylvania, U.S. It was a horrible incident in which two judges of the regional court took bribes worth more than $2 million from two juvenile private corrections companies and sent in return approximately 4, 000 youngsters to the private prisons during 2003~2008.
According to the data released by British newspaper “the Guardian”, there is also a teenage boy among such child victims. He was prosecuted on the suspicion of playing mischievous game by opening up a private website under the name of his vice principal in 2007.
The trial against the indicted teenage boy took only less than a minute before he was forced out of the court in handcuffs without even having an opportunity to plead innocent. The judge was said to have sentenced him to 3 months in detention.
Most of the victims are said to be first offenders that committed petty crimes like stealing small changes and fell prey to the judges and owners of private corrections companies which cast covetous eyes on profits. And many children were reduced to victims by the judge who took the bribe.
Even American media have lamented as follows: “This is one of the most serious cases of infringing upon rights of the child in the American judicial history. The private prison is the black hand behind the crime.”
The mere fact that peculiar prisons called “private prisons” using many prisoners and children as the means of moneymaking exist in the U.S. professing to be the “beacon of human rights” and trumpeting “constitutionalism” can’t but be an insult to and mockery of human rights.
