数说评论丨收监，还是收钱？美国监狱何以成了“一本万利”的私营生意

A murky world inhabited by the U.S. government, private corporations that build, manage, supply and service jails, lobbyists, and a myriad of other groups…

这是一个游走在黑白之间的世界，寄居着美国政府，建造监狱、管理监狱、为监狱提供产品和服务的私营公司，还有游说者和一系列其他群体。

Welcome to the prison–industrial complex, a system that incentivizes corporate profit over offender rehabilitation and wellbeing. 

欢迎来到监狱-工业综合体，一个鼓励企业利润凌驾于罪犯改过迁善与福祉之上的体系。

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. It’s the third most populous country worldwide, with over a billion fewer people than India, yet its total prison population is over four times larger. The American incarceration rate is even more dramatic. Thirty-four of its states have a higher incarceration rate than any country other than the U.S.

美国在押犯人数量为世界之最。作为世界人口第三大国，美国人口比印度少十亿多。而它的收监人口规模却是印度的四倍以上，美国的监禁率更夸张，34个美国州的监禁率比世界上其他任何国家都要高。

Does this mean that Americans are more prone to crime than other nationalities?

这意味着美国人比其他国家的人更容易成为犯罪分子吗？

Of course not. In fact, the prison population over the past decades was bloated by a series of political campaigns and harsher sentencing legislation during the War on Drugs era from the 1970s to 1980s. 

当然不是。事实上，美国监狱人口在过去几十年的增长，主要由20世纪70至80年代毒品战争时期，一系列政治运动和更严格的量刑立法所刺激。

Nationwide, there was an abrupt rise in the number of people caged in the 1970s, and this trend kept accelerating through to the 2000s. Drug offences made up 63 percent of all federal prisoners in the U.S. in 1997. 

全美国范围来看，监禁人口从 20世纪七十年代开始陡然上升，这个上升趋势一直持续到千禧年之后。1997年联邦囚犯中有63%属于毒品犯罪。

Yet the weak connection between drug imprisonment and drug problems in the U.S. suggest that expanding incarceration is not likely to be effective in reducing drug crime, according to Pew Research Center.

然而，皮尤研究中心的研究显示，毒品犯罪监禁并未有效减少美国社会的毒品问题，这表明扩大监禁似乎很难有效减少毒品犯罪。

For example, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that in 2019 those defined as “high-level suppliers” or “importers” who take larger responsibilities in drug trades, only represented 11 percent of federal drug perpetrators, and lower-level actors like street dealers, couriers and mules made up around half of those. And they can be rapidly replaced.

比如，美国量刑委员会发现，2019年那些在毒品交易中应当承担更大罪责的“高阶供应者”或“进口商”只占被逮捕的联邦毒品罪犯中的11%，而包括街头交易者、运毒人和毒骡在内的低阶犯罪分子占比近一半。而低阶群体可以随时被替代。

So who does mass incarceration benefit? Here comes the next component of the prison–industrial complex. Overcrowded prisons make room for more profit opportunities for private corporations.

所以，到底谁能从大规模监禁中获利呢？这就来到了监狱-工业综合体中的下一个构成要素——超负荷的监狱为私营公司创造了更多的盈利机会。

Both founded after President Ronald Reagan institutionalized the War on Drugs, CoreCivic and GEO Group collectively have over half of the prison contracts in the U.S. 

CoreCivic和GEO集团都在罗纳德•里根总统将毒品战争制度化后成立，他们掌握着美国超过一半的监狱合同。

Despite occasional fluctuations, the net incomes of the two companies in a recent seven years were significantly higher than the last seven-year period between 2006 and 2012, as their annual reports indicate.

公司财报显示，尽管有偶尔的波动，两家公司最近七年的净收入明显高于2006至2012的上一个七年。

Overall, there are over 4,100 companies that aim to directly profit from the prison industry. They include private prisons, private companies with overpriced commissaries and telephone services, and those using underpaid or even unpaid prison labor in their supply chains.

整体上看，美国有超过4100家公司直接从监狱产业获利，其中包括私营监狱、提供高价商品与电话服务的私营公司，还有一些在供应链中利用低廉甚至免费监狱劳动力的公司。

U.S. criminal justice officials claim that prison labor programs offer job skills to inmates that help prepare them for life on the outside. But the U.S. still has one of the world’s highest recidivism rates – 76.6 percent of prisoners are rearrested within five years. 

美国刑事司法官员声称监狱劳工项目能为囚犯提供工作技能，以便帮助他们提早为狱外生活做准备。但是美国仍然拥有算得上世界上最高的再犯率——76.6%的犯人在五年内再次被逮捕。

In Norway, inmates who were unemployed before conviction saw an increase of 40 percent in employment rates after release. The recidivism rate in Norway is only 20 percent. In short, rehabilitation can be effective – so why isn’t it in the U.S.?

在挪威，被定罪前处于无业状态的犯人群体在被监狱释放后，就业率能够增加40%。并且挪威的再犯率只有20%。所以说劳改项目可以是有效的，但是为什么在美国就不行呢？

Let’s look at the money flows, the last and critical element of the prison-industrial complex. Public data shows that private corporations in the prison industry could be generous political spenders. 

让我们来看看金钱流动，也是监狱-工业体系的最后一个关键要素。公开数据显示，监狱产业的私营公司在政治花销上可能非常慷慨。

Since 2010, 48 companies have spent a combined $17 million on lobbying as well as financially supporting federal and state candidates, major party committees and ballot measure committees. And 44 of them have revenues from the prison industry only. 

这些公司花钱进行游说，还为联邦和各州候选人重要党派委员会和计票委员会提供资金支持。从2010年起，有48家公司在这些方面的花销超过1700万美元，并且其中44家纯粹依靠监狱产业创收。

The top two on the list, GEO Group and CoreCivic donated heavily to Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in 2016. Less than a month into the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded a six-month-old Obama directive aimed at curtailing the use of private prisons.

这项列表上的前两位GEO集团和CoreCivic公司，曾在2016总统竞选期间向唐纳德•特朗普捐献了大量资金。在特朗普政府执政后的不到一个月内，当时的司法部长杰夫•塞申斯就撤回了一项六个月前奥巴马颁布的旨在减少私人监狱使用的指令。

More prisoners means more contracts and more opportunities for profit, which contributes to higher political spending, and that in turn leads to support from the government to build a sentencing system that cages more people. That’s how the cycle of the prison-industrial complex circulates – and who it benefits. 

更多犯人意味着更多合同和营利机会，从而意味着更多的政治献金。而这又有利于获得更多政府支持，去建立一个监禁更多人的量刑体系，这便是关于监狱-工业体系运转情况以及利益指向的幕后故事。

推荐阅读：