I sat there in the waiting room for what seemed like seconds. There was a person sitting next to me, he was dressed nicely as I was. The other girls in the waiting room were dressed nicely as well. However, he did not look excited to start the internship. His head was down and his fingers intertwined with each other. A police officer called his name and he stood up to go to him. Down the hall, another police officer called my name and I stood up to go as well. The interns that were there in the room also got called and we walked down the hall. I looked back at the boy who had gone into the other room. He wasn’t there for an internship. Something had happened and he was now wrapped in the criminal system. We were both dressed nicely but we each were going somewhere different. It felt strange to see the contrast; to know that you were on the other side of the coin. It could have been me going into that office had my life been different. Perhaps he could have gotten a chance to be an intern too and been the one walking away.

I learned that around 3 million people are involved in the criminal system every single day. There are more privatized prisons then there were in the past. This is because privatization of prisons is efficient. Where the government loses money for every prisoner that comes into the system and takes a bed, companies gain for every prisoner. They are making a profit from having prisoners like a hotel gains profit by having guests fill up rooms, or an airplane fill up seats. These prisoners are made to work and are paid very little wages, though they still receive money so they can have something when they get out of prison. This benefits the companies though who can get cheap labor and have a steady labor pool supply. They want people in prison. There was a case where one of such companies bribed two judges to send more people to jail. These judges would convict individuals whose crimes were minor, such as the girl who stole a jar of nutmeg and was convicted with 4 months in jail. They were eventually caught, but to think that our system is that corrupt has me worried.

The companies also spend a lot of money lobbying for the anti-immigration laws, such as the one passed in Arizona. What’s the connect? I thought when I heard this and then I found out. In the old days, whenever you were caught to be illegal, you would get deported back to your country. That is no longer the case today. Instead, they put you in prison! The companies are only benefiting from people being put in prisons and this is just a money making scheme to them. Examples of companies that rely on prison labor are: Texas Instrument, Honeywell, and the United States government as well. The government have prisoners making envelopes and cardboard boxes, the very same ones that are at the post office. I mean it IS cheap labor after all.

In the state of California, there are increasing number of prisons that have been built. 20 new privatized prisons have been built in the time when only one UC has been built (Merced) and no new state universities have been built. More money goes to the prison system than the education system. And that is mostly all I have learned.