Recent reporting by Kayla Robbins for Invisible People shows for-profit prisons pushing for measures to criminalize homelessness. 

Robins says “the more people they can lock away in their legalized little torture chambers, the more money they make.”

According to a report from Prison Policy Initiative, just three of the main for-profit prisons together make an annual estimated net profit of $374 million. This is even after the billions of dollars required to sustain the prisoners and employees annually.

Robins continues to say the “people and institutions behind the push for widespread homeless criminalization laws would prefer you to believe that we’re seeing waves of identical rhetoric all across the country simply because the people are finally speaking out and finally voicing the opinions they’ve always had.

But that’s not the case. ‘The people’ are reading off of the same cue cards.”

Robins cites the Cicero Institute as a group that is lobbying to try to get states to abandon the Housing First method and criminalize the homeless. Robins says “Housing First keeps people off the streets and out of prison, which means fewer profits for billionaires.” The group aims to make a large recruiting pool out of the homeless with their “Reducing Street Homelessness Act.” It reduces the homeless population by forcing them into prison labor. 

Private for-profit prisons have also been known to side with alcohol lobbyists in trying to prevent marijuana legalization, anything to keep prisons populated and their businesses booming.

Photo by Robert Klank from Unsplash