In addition to the scary problem of privately-operated, for-profit prisons, for-profit corporations are further incentivising higher incarceration rates by tapping into the prison population and exploiting what essentially amounts to slave labour. Regardless of your politics or how you feel about prisoners' rights, this affects you! The corporations that exploit prisoner labour, eager to get even more of it, will continue to bribe ("lobby") Washington for more laws and harsher sentences, because more prisoners = more cheap labour. Any financial incentive to needlessly put more people in prison should be cause for alarm! Furthermore, it is the taxpayers who are subsidizing the decreased labour costs of these private corporations.