The Prison Industry

Praise for The Prison Industry:""This is an essential resource for those working to dismantle the prison industrial complex and anyone who wants to understand the profiteering at the heart of mass incarceration."" —Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing   ""Bianca Tylek, in both her work and her book, has done more to lift the veil on the evil connection between money and the carceral system than anyone. If you want to understand how money drives policy and harms families caught in the maw of the system, read The Prison Industry."" —Vincent Schiraldi, corrections official, scholar, and advocate “This is an essential book. Worth Rises is a small organization, but it has done profound work to help us all understand the scope of the profiteering and corruption that determines nearly every decision in the prison industry. And it is leading the fights against the commercialization of marginalized people’s bodies and families. Everyone should read this.” —Alec Karakatsanis, civil rights lawyer, social justice advocate, and author of Usual Cruelty and Copaganda “The Prison Industry is an essential resource for anyone who cares about the human impacts of criminalization. Packed with concise information, charts, resources, and personal narratives, it is not afraid to name names as it calls out the cruelty of corporations and state actors in every aspect of the prison industry. This book is simultaneously an encyclopedia of corporate greed, an exposé of the cruelty of incarceration, and a clarion call for change.” —Jocelyn Simonson, professor of law, Brooklyn Law School, and author of Radical Acts of Justice ""With the election of would-be authoritarian politicians, the stock prices of companies across the carceral state consistently soar. Bianca Tylek peels back the curtain on the U.S. prison industry. She shows how it extracts so much from the incarcerated and their families, leaving devastation in its wake. Her cross-sectoral analysis of the companies that benefit is simultaneously a blueprint for dismantling it."" —Zachary Norris, co-founder of Restore Oakland   ""Many know that corporate interests corrupt the contemporary American prison system, but Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises take an extra step to detail exactly how these interests manifest. With powerful narratives and meticulous analysis, The Prison Industry is an essential read for anyone committed to challenging how American prisons operate and dismantling the industry of oppression that sustains them."" —Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder of Freedom Reads and author of Felon: Poems