Prisons are springing up around the country like crabgrass because the inmate population has grown from 300,000 to 2.3 million in the past three decades.

Paul Wright and Tara Herivel have pulled together the investigative work of 20 journalists, attorneys, prisoners and advocates to uncover who’s making big profits from mass incarceration. This $186 billion a year business is funded almost entirely by taxpayers’ dollars. These experts will reveal the beneficiaries of this prison-industrial complex:

• Investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction.

• Private companies that staff and manage prisons.

• HMOs and other businesses that provide medical care — and sometimes don’t but get paid for it anyway.

• The U.S. military that relies on prison labor.

• Taser gun manufacturers.

• Prison guard unions and even churches.

CREDENTIALS: Co-editors of PRISON PROFITEERS, Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration, Paul Wright and Tara Herivel, also edited Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor. Wright founded and edited Prison Legal News (www.prisonlegalnews.org) while in prison 18 years ago. Released four years ago, he has also co-edited The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry. Herivel is an attorney in the Portland, OR area.

AVAILABILITY: VT, OR, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone.
CONTACT: Anne Sullivan, The New Press,
(212) 564-4406 (NY); asullivan@thenewpress.com