Xinhua News Agency, Washington, May 22 (Xinhua) Mercenary "modern slave manor" -- the United States private prison violations of human rights bad track

Xinhua News Agency reporter Sun Ding

The United States often put "human rights" on the mouth, but in today's United States, private prisons have become wanton human rights violations of the "modern slave manor". Some private prison operators in the United States are motivated by profit, extreme exploitation of detainees, and unscrupulous pursuit of personal gains. Their human rights violations are appalling.

The United States has the largest incarcerated population and the highest incarceration rate in the world. More than 2 million people were incarcerated or detained in the United States at the end of 2019, with more than 100,000 held in private prisons, according to data released last year by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the US Department of Justice. According to research data, the proportion of private prison inmates in the US quadrupled from 2000 to 2016. Robin Kelly, a professor of American history at the University of California, Los Angeles, pointed out that the United States has become a truly "prison country" because of the massive enrichment of private prisons, the privatization of public prisons, and the incarceration and exploitation of the poor.

Under the capital thinking of "profit is above everything", the private prisons in the United States "carefully calculate" to control costs, and spare no effort to squeeze detainees, resulting in bad living and eating environment in the prison, bloodshed and violence. Frederic Pierucci, a former executive of the French Alstom Company, in his book "American Prison", has disclosed a large number of his personal experience in the United States private prison to collect endless dark scenes. Drink water from a plastic cup; The TV only has pictures, and if you want to listen to sound, you have to buy a radio and headphones at the detention center store... Money, always money! During his time in private prisons in the United States, Pieruzzi also saw firsthand that prisoners often fought with knives, people committed suicide, people were raped, prisoners tried to murder people with sharp shards of glass in their food, and prisoners died for lack of treatment... According to the US weekly Gold Digger, 28% more inmate assaults occur in private prisons in the US than in public prisons, and private prisons "have become bastions of danger and degradation".

In order to ensure "financial resources", private prisons in the United States use various means to engage in virtual collusion between government and business. To secure contracts to detain and monitor illegal immigrants, GEO Group, a private prison giant, lobbied members of the US Congress and made large political donations to them every year, Newsweek reported on its website. According to US media reports, what is surprising is that in the contracts signed between the US government and private prisons, the US government often needs to ensure that the prisoner occupancy rate of private prisons reaches a certain standard, or it needs to pay extra money. In 2011, the state of Arizona paid $3 million to the private Prison Enterprise Management and Training Corporation for failing to ensure that its private prisons were 97 percent occupied. Mr Kelly points out that the US authorities also "produce prisoners" with a steady stream of resources through laws that prosecute minors. Such legislation would obviously only benefit private US prison operators, many of which, such as GEO Group, have made their fortunes by imprisoning immigrants, including children.

The bad track of human rights violations in US private prisons has exposed the hypocrisy of "American-style human rights" to the world. How can the US government have the face to deceive the international community and point fingers at other countries under the banner of "human rights" when its performance in human rights governance is so appalling?

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