The Commodification of Mass Incarceration

The United States

By Ashley Mooring
social equality, justice, privatization, voting rights, equal opportunity,

This project intends to map the state felony restrictions, voter ID laws, prison locations relative to congressional districts and tax cost.

ADVANCE GIS Instructor Eric Brelsford

May 16, 2017 Ashley Mooring

In the United States more people are incarcerated at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world. With 2,220,300 adults in federal and state prisons according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the U.S. has become the breeding ground of corporal punishment. The census from state and federal correctional facilities show that there are 1,719 state prisons and 102 federal prisons, which was supported by a Prison Policy Initiative briefing released in 2014. This project intends to map the state felony restrictions and voter ID laws that keep this system thriving as well as the of use maps to showcase where some of these prisons are located in relation to congressional districts. Finally, this project serves to pinpoint the private companies that invest in the federal, state and private prisons to streamline taxpayer’s dollars.

THE RIGHT TO VOTE STATE FELONY AND VOTER ID LAWS BY STATE

Most states in the United states have strict state felony laws that not only prevent parolees from travelling distances, but these laws also act in conjunction with Voter ID Laws to strip former prisoners of their rights. The 13th Amendment makes these laws admissible under the highest Supreme court.

This map displays various variables: voter ID Laws by state based on total prison population and the state felony restrictions based on disenfranchisement rate of inmates, probationers, parolees and ex-felons within the state. If you look closely you’ll see that many of the southern states like Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas have strict voter Id laws alongside substantial disenfranchise rates for state felons. There is most definitely a correlation between voter id laws and state felony restrictions. However, I was unable to find exit poll data after this past election, but this project could definitely move in that direction to assess if my hypothesis has some validity. This Data was collected from the Sentencing Project.

HOW ARE TAXPAYERS PAYING?
PAYING UP…

Nationally on average, U.S. taxpayers per state paid $32,142 for the upkeep in operation of state, local and private prisons. Here is a map of how each state taxpayer compares to the next based on their state’s average annual taxpayer cost for state prisons. In my research looking at data collected from the National Institute of Corrections, I found that New York taxpayers pay taxes that are 87% higher than the national average taxpayer cost per inmate while Delaware pays 3% and Iowa 2%. This of course can be attributed to the no tax policies in some states like Delaware, Montana, Oregon, and New Hampshire. However, Prison facilities whether, state, federal, private, or detention centers are spread throughout the country. Note: The following states: Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee lightly shaded areas due to the lack of data given to the United States Department of justice’s NIC. These states declined, lacked sufficient resources or practiced a different methodology for collecting data on this matter. I used data from the Vera Institute as well as the NIC on taxpayer costs per inmate and state.

Lastly, who is benefitting from keeping prisons open?

Since details of the investments of private companies like the Corrections Corporation of America (CoreCivic) and the GEO Group, Management and Training Corp., and Community Education Centers seemed too confidential for the public to view;this next map is of the private prisons supported by these corporations throughout the U.S. There are more companies that invest in the private prison industry and it would be interesting to get a hold of the financial data that isn’t available to the public. It would also be interesting to look into the functionality of these facilities and their capacities. The Bureau of Justice (BJS) refers to the design capacity as The number of inmates that planners or architects intended for the facility, the rated capacity as the number of beds or inmates assigned by a rating official to institutions within the jurisdiction and the operational capacity as the number of inmates that can be accommodated based on a facility’s staff, existing programs, and services. This would be interesting because this maybe a stepping stone into figuring out why the the prison industry has become so lucrative for some and a nightmare for others.