With just a little more than 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined. Almost all the other nations with high per capita prison rates are in the developing world.

The prison industrial complex is where the prison system and industry overlap to create the growing problem of mass incarceration. According to the Empty Cages Collective, “The Prison Industrial Complex is not just prisons themselves, it is mutually reinforcing web of relationships, between and not limited to, for example, prisons, the probation service, the police, the courts, all the companies that profit from transporting, feeding and exploiting prisoners, and so forth.”

The private prison industry has expanded over the years to the point where the increase of incarcerated people in America incentivizes companies because of the appeal of profits. Incarcerated individuals are used as cheap labor. They make around 0.33 cents per hour, and this makes the government less apt to act because of the benefits they receive.

When government and large corporations begin to think of the field of corrections as big business, it is easy to see how mass incarceration happens.

The rehabilitation part of incarceration is becoming increasingly infrequent because when a company is paid for how full their prison is, the investment in rehabilitation is clearly running opposite to business goals. Our criminal justice system is supposed to be ruled by rehabilitation and justice, but it is ruled by money and big corporations.

It is almost impossible for me to talk about mass incarceration without talking about systemic racism. Recently, one of the biggest reasons that institutionalized racism has been called out is due to police brutality against people of color.

I think that we are moving forward nationally and internationally to get rid of institutionalized racism and to improve the lives of people of color. To create more forward-thinking policy in order to create a system that is just and fair for people of color, policy needs to focus on expressly addressing specific outcomes dependent on race and give components to diminish those aberrations.

To diminish those aberrations policy should focus on increasing the access to public and private resources for people of color, improving the freedom for people of color to express themselves fully, both culturally and spiritually, removing barriers for people of color to participate civically and people of color should be heavily involved in creating policy.

Lindsey Ulrey is a freshman political science major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or lrulrey@eiu.edu.