#42: Prisoner

It's a great business model: make deal with a state government so that you're paid to imprison people. Cut spending on safety and health so you can rack up big profits. And then use some of those profits to lobby for harsher sentencing, so that the state government makes more deals for more private prisons. Perfect! Except, um, everything.  Today's show shines a spotlight on the private prison system, with help from two of its fiercest critics: the head of Grassroots Leadership, which has helped curb some of the industry's worst excesses, and a former private-prison inmate who tells how he, during his incarceration, helped stop a massive private prison expansion... and then beat the prison company that tried to retaliate against him. Warning: if you listen, you're gonna get angry. ___ RESOURCES Grassroots Leadership's website—research, campaigns, and more."Beyond Walls and Cages"—check out Bob Libal's chapter, "A Prison Is Not A Home"Mother Jones story on Alex Friedmann: "Ex-Con Shareholder Goes After World's Biggest Prison Corporation" Stop Owlcatraz! Students at Florida Atlantic University successfully prevent private prison corporation GEO Group from pushing their way onto campus. (Hear their story on this episode of the Flaming Sword of Justice.)