Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime [Paperback]

InThe Perpetual Prisoner Machine, author Joel Dyer takes a critical look at the United States' criminal justice system as we enter the new millennium. America has more than tripled its prison population since 1980 even though crime rates have been either flat or declining. The U.S. now incarcerates nearly two million people in its prisons and jails on any given day and over five million of its citizens are currently under some form of justice department supervision. These facts raise an obvious question: If crime rates aren't't going up, why is the prison population?The Perpetual Prisoner Machineprovides the answer to this question and, shockingly, it has little to do with crime or justice. The answer is profit. In the 1990s, through their mutual and pension funds, millions of American investors are now unwittingly profiting from crime. As a result of America's controversial push towards the privatization of its justice system, a growing number of well-known and politically influential U.S. Corporations -- and subsequently their shareholders -- are now cashing in on a prison trade whose profit potential is tied directly to the growth of the prison population. A disturbing realization, when you consider the influence that these same multi-national companies now have over our government's policy-making process by way of their lobbyists and their ability to fill campaign coffers.The Perpetual Prisoner Machineexplains how the new prison-industrial complex has capitalized upon the public's fear of crime -- which has its origins in violent media content -- to help bring about the hard on crime policies that have led to our prison-filling, and therefore profitable, war on crime. In addition to a quest for profits, Dyer describes an astounding chain of events including media consolidation and globalization, advances in communication technology, and the increasing political dependence upon public opinion polls and campaign funding that have led to tlÃ/