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Comment by hjhgjtyhgdfi | Hacker News Reader

The largest private for-profit prison (CCA) has $1.7 billion in revenue. Apple makes $233 billion in revenue. Exxon has $268 billion in revenue. Walmart makes $482 billion in revenue.

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https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002194...

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000021754&c...

Their revenue is less than 1% of Apple's, but their lobbying budget is 25%-75% of Apple's year to year.

CCA spent $1 million per year. Apple spent $1.24 million in lobbying in three months. Facebook spent $2.44 million in three months. Microsoft spent $11 million on lobbying per year. Google spent $19 million on lobbying per year.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/04/22/apples-lobbying-co...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00000011...

CCA spent over $3 million in both 2004 and 2005, they've leveled off at $1million for the past 7 years or so.

Also, that's pretty much what I said, isn't it? Apple is about $4 million/year and CCA is at about $1 million/year? Are you quibbling about 20 vs 25%, or trying to make some other point?

Those statistics are really interesting. And that's compounded by the fact that investors don't really care about the total value of a company. They're concerned about the growth potential of companies like Apple while the private prison industry is showing impressive and reliable growth. This creates a powerful incentive to bolster the industry.

There's something obscene about people's retirement funds depending on putting more people in private prisons. It further reinforces the division of society where the happiness of the rich is directly dependent on increasing other people's misery. It's not surprising that the industry has been caught on a few occasions bribing judges to increase sentencing.

Could a fine for private prisons every time an ex-offender is convicted help to rebalance their priorities?

Are prisoners put to tender like school meals are [in the UK]?

But aren't their lobbying expenses more akin to sales expenses since the government is their customer?

Look at how much money CCA spends on lobbying and supporting candidates that are friendly to their business. It is vastly larger per dollar of revenue than Apple (or Walmart). So much so, that it's one of the things people talk about when taking about whether Hillary Clinton (for example) is influenced by the money coming from the prison industrial complex. Nobody is accusing Hillary of being bought by Apple. Though there are concerns about Walmart, due to Hillary's long history with that company, but not because of exorbitant expenditures on lobbying and legalized bribery.

One (of many) articles about how CCA spends money to get the results that suit its bottom line. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251363/cca-geogr...

It's downright evil, frankly.

Teachers unions spent $20 million on the 2012 election alone, no doubt funding candidates who were friendly to their pensions. I can go down the line and list off several more trade unions and their political spending.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=l1300

Why is there seemingly not a peep about this from those who oppose the private prison complex?

Be fair: teachers unions often get talked in very negative terms on HN.

I'm curious: Do you believe teachers asking for more funding is ethically comparable to prisons demanding more prisoners?

I think it hinges on whether the private prison industry is lobbying for more funding per prisoner or tougher laws that result in more prisoners (or longer sentences). If they argue for safer prisons, better rehabilitation programs, more security for guards -- the public should be skeptical but open. If they want to just lock more people up and then bill the government -- that would be somehow like teachers' unions lobbying for less birth control to influence the birth rate and therefore create more demand for teaching jobs. It seems perverse.

In other words, we need prisons just like we need schools, even if people like schools more we shouldn't vilify corrections officers just because they work in an industry we don't care to interact with. It's all about their conduct, which has been terrible. Teachers unions are also self-serving, but they at least pretend to have the child's interest at heart.

Perhaps he's more pointing out the hypocrisy of attaching a scale/range of ethical values to something he determines to be an unethical act entirely, regardless of the ethical value of the reasons behind it.

Most people have more ethical qualms about profiting off of incarceration than about possibly paying too much money to people who educate our children. This is not surprising.

How is this not a red-herring? Does "massively profitable" mean the same as "the most profitable"?

OP's point is that there is allot of money on the line and that serves as inertia to keep the highly punitive measures in place. $1.7 billion is allot of inertia. It might not be as much as Exxon who wants to deny global warming, or Walmart who wants more "free trade" but are we to ignore mass incarceration because there are more profitable moral hazards?

So it makes as much money as Uber instead of Walmart? Just because it's not the biggest doesn't mean it's not big.

Uber is a a high-growth startup as you may be aware, and will far eclipse its 2015 revenue this year. Even so, comparing the revenues of the "massively profitable" prison company that's been around since 1983 with a single Silicon Valley startup that just got off the ground a few years ago is quite a stretch and a false equivalence.

....And burger king exists since 1953 and "only" makes $1.06B of revenue per year, so what?

3 billion dollars is more than many small countries make in an entire year (nominal GDP)

The industry made 3.3 billion, of which the vast majority is controlled by 2 groups. That's enough to form a lobby.

But where do government run prisons get their food, clothes, guard outfits, toilets, toiletries, etc?

Is it really accurate to exclude all of those from the calculation?

Apple, Exxon and Walmart add value.

So do you think Apple and Exxon will lobby for marijuana and heroin legalization? Because CCA certainly will against it.

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