Private Prisons 'Going Up the River'

In an impartial review, private prisons received a major downgrade from Joseph T. Hallinan, author of Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation.

The 262-page book profiles people and prisons in places such as Big Stone Gap, Va.; Beeville, Texas; and Florence, Colo., rural areas where expensive private prisons are used to stimulate economic growth. Hallinan asserts that the facilities don’t save money and do little in the way of rehabilitating today’s inmates.

The book examines the reasons for the explosion in prison construction: stringent federal sentencing guidelines, "three strikes" laws and other reforms that helped push the prison population above 2 million last year.

Going Up the River also exposes several ethical issues within the private- prison industry: the exploitation of inmates to sew lingerie, assemble computers and telemarket for magazine publishers, etc.; opening doors to vendors of transportation and health care services; and the shipment of inmates to facilities hundreds of miles from their homes, racking up more than $1 billion in long-distance phone charges.

And, of course, there’s the sobering view of for-profits like Corrections Corporation of America, which pour money into political campaigns for favors granted.

Hallinan was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Indianapolis Star who’s now a Wall Street Journal correspondent. His book was published by Random House.