Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard
The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners.Financial profiting from prisoners:
Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr
California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose cheap labor..Courts said they had to: https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-it-cant-rel...30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force.Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by private companies operating inside the prison