That's a common narrative, but it's not the driving force behind the drug war. Look at corruption, look at hardened attitudes on drugs, look at race, look at civil asset forfeiture, look at the militarization of law enforcement. That's where the momentum for the drug war is coming from, not so much from for-profit prison systems (though that does add a small component).

Not to mention private prisons have never been a large fraction of the prison system. The drug war dates to the late 1960s - and goes back further culturally. Corporate prisons were even less relevant when the drug war started putting tons of people in prison circa 1980, than they are today.

The problem is the US Government, and always has been.

>many prisons are run by for-profit companies.

Citation for the "Many"?

Only about 5% of prisoners are in private prisons.

Given how many prisons are in the US, that probably still qualifies as 'many'...

I've got 8.4% (2013 U.S. DOJ statistics) via WikiPedia

if you add prison guards unions - which are formally non-profit, and that only means that they have no taxes to pay and they have nobody else to give the formal profit away, and as result they have all the money they collect to themselves - you'd get pretty much 100% of US prisons run by organizations with direct financial interests in growing the prisons in size and number.

By that logic, wouldn't every part of government with unions be "run by organizations with direct financial interests in growing...?"

That seems like it would be a union problem and not a prison problem.

Except in this case, peoples' freedoms are denied. Versus, say, waiting longer in line at the DMV.

yep, there is a reason why military for example aren't allowed to form a union. I hope CIA/FBI/NSA aren't allowed to have it too. And prison guards and police shouldn't be allowed to. Holders of "license for violence" shouldn't have masters other than the government hierarchy they belong to thus minimizing conflict of interests.

If you look at who's making profit on war on drugs, look up how much money is taken by civil forfeiture. That's where the real money is. And by real money I mean millions, hundreds of millions. Just one case: http://www.government-fleet.com/news/story/2012/04/rhode-isl... There are many, many more. And not only from fatcats - there are thousand of forfeiture cases for sums like $300-$500.

The government is the for-profit prison system.

The money made on prisons, is made by construction firms, labor that works at the prison, and slave labor used to manufacture things. There is a ton of profit being made from government prisons.

I always find it bizarre that people point to the 5% to 8% problem - corporate prisons - and think that is the problem, while pretending the huge money that circles around the other 92% - the government prisons - is benign by comparison. The other 92% is even more vile than the 8% corporate prisons - it's 11 times larger.