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Now welcome to the award-winning BestOfAlef podcast with clips today from Truthloader,

Redacted tonight with Comedian Lee Camp, Melissa Harris-Perry, Democracy Now, We The Podcast, hosted by Congressman Keith Ellison,

The Young Turks, and Activism Today, supporting a bill by Senator Bernie Sanders.

Between 1970 and 2005, the US's prison population grew by a massive 700%.

Far outpacing both population growth and crime rates.

Today, it's got to the stage where America is home to 5% of the world's population, but a quarter of the world's prisoners.

And not only does America have the highest imprisonment rates of any country in the entire world, but it also has the highest rate of youth incarceration.

Over 130,000 juveniles are detained in the US every year, and on any given day, there are more than 70,000 youths in detention.

The biggest winners of this mass incarceration haven't been the American public, but the private prison companies who are making giant profits out of people being in jail.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2010, the two largest prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion in revenue,

while their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth more than $3 million.

Private prisons didn't really exist before the early 1980s, when US states and the federal government needed a solution to the overcrowding in public prisons.

But between 1990 and 2009, the number of people in private prisons increased by a massive 1,600%.

And the business model of these private prison companies essentially depends on locking more and more people up.

The biggest of the US's private prison companies is the corrections corporation of America, otherwise known as the CCA.

In its 2010 annual report to shareholders, the CCA stated,

The demand for facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts,

leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices, or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently prescribed by our criminal laws.

The CCA seems to be particularly concerned about the decriminalization of drug use and any potential changes to immigration laws.

For instance, any changes with the respected drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.

Because of these concerns, private prison companies spend a lot of money on lobbying politicians.

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