Protesting prisons-for-profit that prey on the poor, powerless immigrant detainees in Harlem

“… America is the world’s leading jailer…”

Incarcerating poor, powerless people for profit is a despicable business, but it sure is profitable.

“Hello Harlem, we’re here to help” reads an unintentionally ironic sign in a Wells Fargo bank, a major investor in two private prison companies, the GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) that in 2010 made a whopping $2.9 billion in profits (both lobbying at both the state and federal level for laws like the infamous Arizona and Alabama anti-immigrant legislations).

On Monday 200 people took to the streets to protest the scandalous connection between investment in private prisons and the mass jailing of prisoners and immigrant detainees for profit. The demonstration was organized by the Occupy Wall Street Immigrant Worker Justice working group and the OWS Prisoner Solidarity working group,

“[For these corporations\] the more people in prison the better it is for business,” said Mariano Muñoz of the Occupy Wall Street Immigrant Worker Justice working group.

The rally began in front of the Lincoln Correction Facility in Harlem, one of the city’s many African-American neighborhoods devastated by the explosive growth in prisons over the past few decades. From there, protesters marched to a Wells Fargo bank branch. Since 1996 it has grown from 70,000 people detained annually to more than 380,000 in 2009, according to Detention Watch Network (DWN). America is the world’s leading jailer and maintains a large network of detention facilities, comprised of about 350 federal and private facilities, state prisons and county jails, at an annual cost of more than $1.7 billion to taxpayers, says DWN.

“Immigrants are both the targets of the Wells Fargo backed private prison industry and the victims of free trade laws and American foreign policy initiatives that have crippled their local economies,” said Andrea Black, DWN executive director. “Today we stand with those incarcerated on U.S. soil and demand justice for all.”