`Going up the River` by Joseph T. Hallinan

40-Billion industry that employs close to half a million workers

Hallinan writes that what most Americans do not know is that the United States has created prison millionaires ' As one prison executive he interviewed puts it , the prison industry is a growing business (Cass 2001 , par . 7

There is so much money in the system that the budget for prisons in some states now equals or exceeds the budget appropriated to higher or university education

Take for example , New York City . Between 1988 and 1998 , the state increased its budget

for prisons by more than three-quarters of a billion dollars . At the same time , the state government reduced the spending for New York State and university colleges by almost the same amount (Markowitz , 2002 ,

. 121

In some communities , prisons have turned out to be more than just rehabilitation and correction buildings , they have become profit centers as well . There are a lot of private companies that profit from the prison boom - from the fencing and barbed wire business to telephone companies . The growing number of correction officers and their unions also get a chunk of the prison budget

What Hallinan fears is that since the industry has become a money-making venture , lobbying for longer sentences is simply inevitable . Given the cash involved , giving in to such pressure is just inevitable

In summary , the book first published in 2001 , is an honest account of the grim and politics present in the prison industry . Hallinan suggests that there is so much more to cell overcrowding than what meets the eye The purpose of rehabilitation is taking a back seat to money and American taxpayers are the ones taking the dirty cudgels

As Hallinan chose to conclude it in his book , the level of violence and fear and degradation that permeates most...