Observing the ‘prison-industrial’ complex

A couple of years ago, Conrad Black from Montreal was one of the biggest newspaper tycoons in the world.

Black is now serving time in the U.S., convicted on charges that he diverted funds from his company into his own pocket. Prosecutors accused him of running a “corporate kleptocracy.”

The interesting twist from a North Country point of view is that Black has been penning editorials, some of which observe the state of criminal justice in the U.S.

His opinions are obviously to be viewed in context: he’s a convicted felon, serving 78 months in a federal prison.

But it’s still a point of view worth thinking about occasionally, given that prisons are the mainstay of our region’s economy.

His comments first appeared in Spear’s Wealth Management Survey magazine.

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan.

US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences.

The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.

What do you think? Is American justice unduly influenced by economics and politics? Comment below.