Name: Adam Ruins Everything - The Shocking Way Private Prisons Make Money
Uploaded: 2017-01-15T13:54:51.000Z
Duration: 4 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

But in the meantime, this is a great opportunity to explain why our nation's prison system is a failure on every level.

I bet you watch a lot   of PBS documentaries, huh?

Ooh, maybe you could help me do this episode?

America's prison system    is a total mess.

Whatever purpose you think  it serves, it ain't doing it.

Well, the point of prison    is to reduce crime.

There are  2.2 million people incarcerated in the U.S.,

Two million is more than the population of some states.

Welcome to Mass-Incarceration-   Achusetts.

But despite  this massive increase in the prison population,

a study conducted    by the NYU School of Law

found that the effect    on the crime rate has been essentially zero.

Zero? Then why do we lock    so many people up?

You mean someone is profiting from all this?

It all started in the "tough on crime" '80s,

when the war on drugs meant state and federal prisons were bursting at the seams.

Let corporate America    handle your prisons.

Save you a few bucks and skim a little    off the top.

And so the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, was born.

Okay, hold on.   You can't just sell prisons like they're cars or real estate  or hamburgers.

Hmph! Then why don't you    tell that to Tom Beasley。

the co-founder of CCA    who once said..."YOU JUST SELL PRISONS LIKE YOU WERE SELLING CARS, OR REAL ESTATE, OR  HAMBURGERS."

I'll have a number seven   with extra solitary cells,

Because they're saving the taxpayer money.

The data shows that private prisons cost the taxpayers   just as much as regular prisons.

And today, nearly one-fifth  of federal prisoners are held    in a for-profit facility.

Oh, my gosh, I already got an infraction.

One study showed  that private prisons dole out twice as many   infractions as government prisons.

These penalties   can lengthen your sentence,

Oh, so the more people   that are in prison,

Yep, that's why private prisons sneak occupancy clauses into their contracts,

which actually require states to keep prisons full.

Last year, a private prison   in Arizona didn't make    their 97% capacity quota,

so the state government had to pay them a $3 million fine.

Fines like that incentivize cash-strapped states to keep people in prison as long as possible.

Your parole forms    are in order and you've been    a model prisoner,

We really can't afford   to pay another fine.

Look, not all prisons  are private prisons,

I can't believe all this has been happening and I didn't even know.

I mean, I never thought  about prison, like, at all.

Hey, pulling back the curtain on our disturbing   business practices,