[bsenftner]

There is an insidious reason driving our incarceration rates: prisons rent inmates to corporations as contract workers for pennies an hour. With guarantees of the number of inmates they will be supplied. Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money.

[jongraehl]

I don't think that's the main cause (for-profit jails and police/prison-unions are surely primary), but the argument does work - incarceration costs the public far more than it could save in suppressed wages, but the companies that benefit don't care about that.