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How mass incarceration became ‘a business opportunity’ in America
This is part 1 of Yahoo Finance’s Illegal Tender podcast about the for-profit prison industry. Listen to the series here. Mass incarceration in the U.S. grew over decades as more politicians with tough-on-crime stances became elected to office and laws changed surrounding sentencing. In that environment, the private prison industry became a place to generate a lot of revenue. “A lot of these criminal laws were changed with the political support of individuals who supported the private prison corporation because they saw a business opportunity,” Amy Fettig, executive director at The Sentencing Project, told Yahoo Finance’s Illegal Tender. “They saw the incarceration, the denial of freedom of our fellow Americans, people…